Proceedings - Biomass South 2008
Dr. Sandra Eksioglu, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University
Dr. Sandra D. Eksioglu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Mississippi State University. Her research is focused on the areas of supply chain optimization, supply chain and logistics management, and operations research. She is the education coordinator of the National Center for Intermodal Transportation housed by the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and the chair of the Transportation Working Group sponsored by the Bagley College of Engineering. Dr. Eksioglu's current research is concentrated on designing and managing the chain to supply biomass to biorefineries.
Supply Chain Design Models for Cellulosic Ehtanol Production Plants: A Study of Mississippi
The objective of this study is to provide a framework for designing the supply chain of c-ethanol production facilities. It is estimated that about 20-40% of the cost of biofuels is due to biomass supply, and about 90% of the costs of supplying biomass are logistics related costs. This study proposes a mathematical model that takes care of the particular characteristics of biomass. The model determines the number, size and location of biomass collection facilities and c-ethanol production facilities, and designs the inbound and outbound supply chain for each facility. The State of Mississippi is used as the testing ground of these models.
Notes:
- Supply chain of c-ethanol
- Harvesting sites (fields/forests)
- Collection facilities (storage – corn elevators/mills)
- Bio-refinery
- Blending facility want close to supply or market?
- Market/customer
- One large or several small facilities? How many? Where?
- What kind of transportation to use?
- Decisions are challenging
- Supply constrained by land availability
- Seasonality – uncertain yield
- High logistic cost
- High transaction cost
- Requires a large number of supplies
Summary
- Has been very little focus on Biomass supply chain, will receive more as industry grows to improve profiles
- Build a mathematical model
- Logistics cost analysis – sensitivity analysis
- Case study
- Woody biomass and corn stover
- Input > investment costs ;600MG/yr, need $310 million
- Availability of feedstock in Mississippi – assume 30% of corn stover could be removed
- Worse conversion rates means need to transport farther
- Managing biomass supply is crucial to success of projects and is a challenging problem due to the large # of variables involve
Thanks to Sarah Ashton, Rachel Cook, Lindsey Hannum, James Jeuck, Liwei Lin, James McCarter, Susan McIntyre, and Mark Megalos for providing notes and summaries for presentations.
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