Comparative assessment of bioethanol supply chain: insights from Iran

Abstract

Biofuels are important alternative fuel in recent years. In this work, the bioethanol supply chain planning is performed by BioEnergy Supply Model to optimally find the best pathways using economic and environmental objective functions in Iran. Then, different sustainability criteria focusing on environmental, economic, and social concerns are assessed for possible routes of the bioethanol production from available resources. Although agriculture residues and wastes, decrease the greenhouse gas emissions but municipal solid wastes are more economic and require less water. The agricultural wastes and residues improve the sustainability. Then, criteria focusing on environmental, economic, and social concerns are assessed for available agricultural resources. The most cost-intensive bioethanol is obtained from the rice and barley wastes with 52.6 and 42.4 billion dollars over 25 years, respectively. The lowest total cost of the supply chain belongs to sugarcane and sugar beet wastes with the amounts of 10.7 and 13.56 billion dollars, respectively. The bioethanol form wastes of rice, barely, and wheat cultivation mitigates the global warming more than other resources while they have negative carbon cycles. Similarly, the highest and lowest number of created jobs of bioethanol supply chain belong to the rice wastes and the sugar beet and corn residues.