Abstract
The authors study the corn crop residue management system for 16 provinces in northern Thailand encompassing 127 agricultural cooperatives (co-ops), 974 corn fields and 274 customers. To solve the system's problems, we find clusters where co-ops will pick up crop residues from corn fields, process them into biomass fuel and sell the fuel to customers. Each cluster consists of a co-op, a set of corn fields and a set of customers, the latter two being on separate routes from the co-op. To minimize the system's transportation cost and balance transportation cost between clusters, we propose a mathematical model with two objective functions, construct two heuristics, and apply the two heuristics to solve the problem.
Highlights
Thailand is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of agricultural products [1]
To reduce CO2 emissions and the air pollution affecting the lives of northerners, the government annually carries out a campaign called “No Burning for 51 Days” during March and April, and has tried different policies to curb the practice of agricultural waste burning
The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), a well-known combinatorial optimization problem, is concerned with designing routes to serve a set of customers subject to vehicle and customer restrictions
Summary
Thailand is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of agricultural products [1]. The most common disposal method among northern corn farmers is open burning in the field, which produces large amounts of air pollutants. This method of elimination is believed to be a major cause of widespread air pollution problems that are endangering the health of the region’s inhabitants. To reduce CO2 emissions and the air pollution affecting the lives of northerners, the government annually carries out a campaign called “No Burning for 51 Days” during March and April, and has tried different policies to curb the practice of agricultural waste burning One of these policies, to support the transformation of waste into fuel pellets, is directly related to our case study, the corn residue transportation system in northern Thailand. In this work, split deliveries are not allowed, but they will be investigated further in future work
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