Bioethanol supply chain network design considering land characteristics

Biomass is becoming an increasingly widespread source of energy. Yet land, as one of the most important resources in biomass production, is surprisingly understudied in the literature of biomass supply chain planning. This study proposes a novel framework that combines the literature of bioethanol supply chain design with agricultural land planning to simultaneously address optimal supply chain planning and sustainable land use in a bioethanol supply chain. A bi-objective mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to formulate the optimal design and planning of a bioethanol supply chain network considering competition of food and biomass feedstock over the available croplands. The proposed model is capable of making strategic decisions (i.e. locations and capacities of facilities, sourcing and allocation of biomass feedstocks to biorefineries), along with some tactical decisions (i.e. land planning, inventory and production of both biomass feedstock and bioethanol). The model incorporates the two objectives of minimum cost and maximum suitability of crops with their assigned croplands. A novel integration of the FAO framework, the best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method, PROMETHEE II and GIS is used to determine the suitability of available croplands according to the croplands’ soil and topographical characteristics. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated through a multi-feedstock bioethanol supply chain in Fars province, Iran. It is concluded that the proposed integrated land planning-network design framework outperforms hierarchical approaches in which network design and land planning problems are solved separately in a sequential manner. Also, the case study shows that conditional on implementing second generation bioethanol production, Fars province has the potential to satisfy three percent of the fuel demand for transportation in the country.