Abstract
In recent years, research has shown that biomass can be a source of energy to replace fossil fuels and effectively reduce current environmental crises. Researchers have studied how biofuels are supplied through the oil supply chain to achieve tangible results. This paper presents an optimization model for the gas-oil and biodiesel supply chains suggesting the optimization of both supply chains simultaneously for the first time. The proposed model deals with the connection points of two supply chains and determines the two chains’ connection points by considering two economic and environmental objective functions. The model can be used to make decisions on issues such as location, allocation, production planning, inventory management, capacity expansion, and so forth. The proposed programming model’s performance has been studied through a real case study in Iran and the sensitivity analyses have been performed. The ε-constraint method was used to solve the multi-objective model. The proposed model is expected to be effective in the future management of countries’ fuel sources, particularly to be used as an alternative to fossil fuels. Also, this research can provide a basis for more extensive research on fuel supply chain integration.
Highlights
Current global energy consumption shows a significant upward trend by 2030
On the one hand, issues such as energy security and countries’ dependence on fossil fuels that end one day, and on the other hand, crises caused by environmental pollution have shifted countries to alternative sources that address the above two challenges [2]
In recent years, finding alternative energy sources to fossil fuels has become an important issue in the world
Summary
Current global energy consumption shows a significant upward trend by 2030. Rising pollution, declining fossil fuels, environmental concerns, economic development, climate change, the food crisis, and fuel price fluctuations have posed serious challenges for energy planning and management [1]. The US Department of Energy in a study has addressed the issue of integrating a hydrocarbon biofuel supply chain with existing oil supply chain production and distribution infrastructure. They show three connection points for these two chains. The second is for the semi-finished material to go to upgrade units for further processing, and the third is for the finished fuel to come to a warehouse or distribution point for petroleum products to use the existing distribution capacity This eliminates the need of building many facilities in the biofuel supply chain and reduces many costs [9].
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