Integrated Strategic and Tactical Planning of non-Edible Biomass-to-Biofuel Supply Chains

Abstract

Iran has high potential of renewable resources and biomass is one of the most important of them. While the biomass is fairly cheap, the logistic costs are major obstacles in utilizing these sources. In this paper, a mathematical programming model (a MILP model) is presented to design the biodiesel supply chain network (BSCN) in Iran. A supply chain model is presented that is in accordance with the real conditions and geographical features of the case study. Due to, importing most of edible oils in Iran and their high production costs, non-edible biomass including Jatropha curcas L. (JCL) and waste cooking oil (WCO) are considered as sources of producing biodiesel. In addition, in this study, the possibility of capacity expansion of facilities in different periods is considered. The presented approach is used to design a three-echelon, multi-product, multi-period BSCN. This model determines the strategic and tactical decisions including location, number, capacity of the facilities, production, inventory and material flow throughout the network. The result of this paper shows the effectiveness of the presented approach for designing the BSCN.