A decision model for cost effective design of biomass based green energy supply chains

• Published in: Bioresource technology 2015-09, Vol.191, p.97-109
• Main Authors: Yılmaz Balaman, Şebnem, Selim, Hasan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anaerobic digestion; Biofuels - economics; Biogas production; Biomass; Cost-Benefit Analysis - economics; Energy-Generating Resources - economics; Fuzzy multi objective mathematical modeling; Models, Theoretical; Refuse Disposal - economics; Supply chain optimization; Turkey
• ISSN: 0960-8524; 1873-2976
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2015.04.078

•A decision support tool is developed to design economic green energy supply chains.•Anaerobic digestion systems are modeled as component of the bioenergy supply chain.•Fuzzy goal programming approach is applied to the model.•Multiple economic objectives are optimized considering uncertain parameters.•The effects of different conditions on supply chain are observed. The core driver of this study is to deal with the design of anaerobic digestion based biomass to energy supply chains in a cost effective manner. In this concern, a decision model is developed. The model is based on fuzzy multi objective decision making in order to simultaneously optimize multiple economic objectives and tackle the inherent uncertainties in the parameters and decision makers’ aspiration levels for the goals. The viability of the decision model is explored with computational experiments on a real-world biomass to energy supply chain and further analyses are performed to observe the effects of different conditions. To this aim, scenario analyses are conducted to investigate the effects of energy crop utilization and operational costs on supply chain structure and performance measures.