Optimal Supply Chain for Renewable Furfural Production Involving Economic, Environmental and Social Criteria

Abstract

Abstract Biochemicals produced from lignocellulosic residues appear to be a feasible alternative to replace current chemicals derived from oil. Nevertheless, some important challenges need to be overcome in order to achieve a feasible transition towards biochemicals. These challenges are the biomass seasonality and availability, selection of suitable feedstocks, potential biorefineries allocation, as well as numerous economic environmental, social restrictions. Those challenges can be address through the design of a suitable supply chain. In this work a multi-period supply chain to produce furfural from agricultural wastes of Mexico is proposed, this model was written and optimized in GAMS. The demand of furfural was selected in order to replace the raw materials used to produce the terephthalic acid, which is imported to Mexico. Economic, environmental, and social criteria were chosen to evaluate the supply chain performance. Finally, the results obtained show that it is feasible the replacement of the current raw materials for producing terephthalic acid by furfural produced from agricultural wastes. The supply chain solution with the best tradeoff among the different metrics consists of a net profit of 1000 million USD/year, 19000 jobs generated and 370 million of eco-points /year.