Due to the depletion of the fossil fuels and major concerns about the security of energy in the future to produce fuels, the importance of utilizing the renewable energies is distinguished. Nowadays there has been a growing interest for biofuels. Thus, this paper reveals a general optimization model which enables the selection of preprocessing centers for the biomass, biofuel plants, and wareho...

The utilization of renewable biomass as feedstock for biofuel production has been gaining prestige to mitigate carbon emissions. This paper aims render an optimization model designing a resilient and reliable biomass-to-biofuel supply chain network in which multi-modal terminals, biorefineries, their connection link could be faced with disruption. For this purpose, risk-averse optimization, tra...

An advanced biofuels supply chain is proposed to reduce biomass transportation costs and take advantage of the economics of scale for a gasification facility. In this supply chain, biomass is converted to bio-oil at widely distributed small-scale fast pyrolysis plants, and after bio-oil gasification, the syngas is upgraded to transportation fuels at a centralized biorefinery. A two-stage stocha...

This study presents a pre-disaster planning model that seeks to strengthen the multi-modal facilities links for a biofuel supply chain system under limited budget availability. The model decides a set of links to invest with the objective of maximizing the post-disaster connectivity while simultaneously minimizing the bio-fuel supply chain related costs. The failure probability of the links bet...

The biomass supplier selection problem is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty because of subjective preferences/evaluations of decision makers, raw material cost fluctuations, variations in biomass seasonality and the dynamics of biomass demand. Designing a biomass supply chain often becomes a time-dependent problem that should be addressed by examining adequate supply schemes in diff...

BACKGROUND Microalgae are touted as an attractive alternative to traditional forms of biomass for biofuel production, due to high productivity, ability to be cultivated on marginal lands, and potential to utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial flue gas. This work examines the fossil energy return on investment (EROIfossil), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and direct Water Demands (WD) of ...

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 targets use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022. Achieving this may require substantial changes to current transportation fuel systems for distribution, dispensing, and use in vehicles. The U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory designed a system dynamics approach to help focus government action by d...

Project Objectives The main purpose of this project is to analyze the impact of intermodal facilities in the design of supply chains for biofuel production facilities. This objective will be attained by pursuing two specific aims: (a) Build mathematical models that will be used to design the in-bound and out-bound supply chain of a biorefinery. This model will take as an input (i) location of e...