Biofuel Composite Curve for Supply Chain
One of the major cost components of biofuel production involves the cultivation, harvesting, and transportation of biomass feedstock. Using an Excel-VBA interface, we optimize the transportation costs of biomass from farms to a given biorefinery by generating a procurement plan and composite curves. The procurement plan indicates which farms (or farm regions) should ship biomass, while the composite curves indicate the optimal transportation cost and the amount of biomass to be shipped from each farm. Furthermore, the interface has the option to optimize the biorefinery location based on feedstock availability.
Biofuel Supply Chain Design Under Uncertainty
When designing a supply chain for the production of biofuels, there are many sources of uncertainty that can influence the solution. Previous stochastic models account for the effects of uncertainty related to biomass seasonality and agricultural district (Figure 2a). In this work, we develop a stochastic model that accounts for temporal uncertainty (i.e., crop availability over the years) which often results in highly distributed biomass availability maps (Figure 2b).
Identifying Promising Bio-based Chemicals
We developed an Excel-VBA interface to rapidly identify promising bio-based chemicals based on their price, US demand, and market size. A user can fine-tune the identification process through the selection of different criteria and the corresponding threshold values. The interface displays a list of bio-based chemicals satisfying the selected criteria and graphs to aid in the selection of chemicals (Figure 3).
