01340276

Component

While ever-growing bio-ethanol production poses considerable challenges to the bioenergy supply chain, the risk of refinery operation disruptions further compromises the efficiency and reliability of the energy supply system. This paper develops discrete and continuous reliable facility location models to the design of reliable bio-ethanol supply chains so that the system can hedge against potential operational disruptions. The discrete model is shown to be suitable for obtaining the exact optimality for small or moderate instances, while the continuous model has superior computational tractability for large-scale applications. The impacts of both site-independent and dependent disruptions are analyzed with a series of numerical experiments with empirical data for the State of Illinois, one of the main biomass supply states in the United States. It is found that refinery disruptions, especially those site-dependent ones, affect both optimal refinery deployment and the supply chain cost. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted to show how refinery failure probabilities and penalty cost (for ethanol production reduction) affect optimal supply chain configuration and the total expected system cost.

01329018

11-0251

English

19p

2011

Transportation Research Board 90th Annual Meeting

DVD

Figures; Maps; References; Tables (1)

Biomass fuels; Energy resources; Energy storage systems; Ethanol; Industrial location; Petroleum refineries; Sensitivity analysis; Supply chain management

Disruptions

Energy; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2011 Paper #11-0251

TRIS, TRB

Feb 17 2011 5:22PM