Site selection for catch crop processing facilities

Abstract

For efficient biomass collection and transportation, it is important to determine the optimal locations for processing facilities, which are strongly affected by the geographical distribution of biomass in a given region. This study focused on identifying optimal locations, considering changes in the distribution of the available biomass. We developed a methodology to select the optimal locations for processing facilities based on minimizing transportation and on the biomass availability in a given region. The methodology was applied to selecting optimal locations for catch crop utilization; catch crops are vegetation grown in the fallow period of commercial vegetable production to absorb excess nutrients from the soil. The results of this study demonstrate a shift in the optimal location from the eastern part of the study area to the central part in the event of an increase in available biomass in the western region. In the case of two facilities, no shift was evident and the locations stabilized in the western and eastern parts of the central region of the study area. We evaluated these results within the context of transportation cost, transport distances, and the collected volume of catch crop. The methodology that we developed is relatively simple and easily applied to the collection of other biomass resources.