Journal of Environmental Treatment Techniques
2019, Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages: 689-695
plants while decarbonizing the energy industry along the
way. In order to capture this potential, a cost-effective
biomass supply chain management is crucial. Establishing a
centralized biomass collection center and conversion facility
could be an essential component in the supply chain to reduce
the processing cost and logistic cost.
Many tried to resolve problems mostly related to the triple
bottom line of sustainability; namely i) economy, through
minimization of cost associated with transportation, storage
and inventory, redistribution and disaster losses (6), ii)
environment, through minimization of air pollution such as
CO emission (7), and iii) social, through maximization of
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social benefits such as job opportunities (8).
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.1 Biomass Supply Chain System
Effective management of biomass supply chain is
The center of gravity (COG) method is a well-established
tool to find the geographical location a new facility which
have to transport goods between the demand and supply
points (9). This method ensures that the optimal location
coordinates would minimize the required weighted travelling
distances among them. In some cases, the method has to be
modified such as implemented by Almetova et al. (2016) to
cater unevenness in logistic flows in cargo network (10).
Furthermore, in order to a solve more complex, multi-
objective, multi-echelon facility location problem, mixed-
integer linear programming model is most commonly adopted
critically important to ensure bioenergy project viability and
economic feasibility. Three important terminals along the
supply chain have been identified, namely; i) biomass supply
point (BSP), ii) biomass processing facility (BPF), and iii)
biomass demand centre (BDC) or the market as shown in
Figure 1.
(
11–14). Some used fuzzy theory to manage situation of
uncertain parameters (11, 15), while others used Fuzzy C
Means (FCM) clustering algorithm as a complementary tool
to assign geographical clustering of distribution points (16,
1
7) or to fine tune the facility location optimization result
Figure 1: Supply chain in bioenergy production system.
(
18). In FCM method, an objective function called C-means
functional is minimized through
clustering algorithm (19).
a fuzzified k-means
Generally, BSP is where all the biomass is produced and
will be collected from, such as the palm oil mills. Meanwhile,
BPF serves as a collection hub and conversion facility. This
is where the collected biomass will be stored and processed to
improve its quality and durability before shipping. Finally,
the processed biomass will be transported to BDC, where
biomass is consumed by end-use sectors whether industrial,
transport or residential. For industrial, it could be a power
plant or a biorefinery. BDC could also function as a hub for
national or international trade of biomass since there is a high
demand for biomass pellet from South Korea, Japan & China,
which may reach up to 16 million ton by 2020. International
import and export of biomass will further promote
diversification of its product portfolio and market
competitiveness.
This study is a preliminary work to optimize BPF
location provided that BSP and BDC locations are known and
fixed, using a new modelling approach, which is the
minimized least-square regression (LSR) method. This
model enables simultaneous minimization of the road
transportation distance between each terminal, with
consideration of the number of trips required to transport all
the biomass. The result will then be compared with the
conventional COG and FCM methods. An empirical analysis
was implemented via a case study in Perak, Malaysia, based
on the current palm oil mill biomass availability data and
existing road network.
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Methodology
2
.1 Facility Location Optimization Techniques
1
.2 New Facility Location Optimization
Three methods were used to determine the suitable
The economic viability of bioenergy production system
location of BPF that reduces the overall logistic cost, which
are; i) Centre of gravity (COG), ii) Fuzzy clustering or Fuzzy
C Means (FCM) and iii) Least-square regression (LSR). The
objective function is minimization of the total travelling
distance between the terminals, on the premise that
minimizing it will result in minimized total logistic cost and
depends heavily on the cost of biomass feedstock supplies.
Biomass sourced from agricultural industry in general is not
expensive, the purchase price for raw EFB biomass for
example, could be as low as 1.75 USD/tonne. However, the
logistic cost to transport it from each BSP to BDC could be
large and take a heavy toll on total biomass procurement cost.
In a life cycle assessment of EFB consumption for green
chemical production in Malaysia, Reeb et al. (2014)
discovered that transportation cost caused substantial
financial burdens, responsible for about 61% of the total
delivered cost.
This is where BPF should come into play, by serving as a
collection cum redistribution hub, hence ensuring efficient
logistic chain and matching of demand and supply. The
optimization of BPF location in between BSP and BDC is
therefore critically important to minimize the logistic cost.
Various mathematical approaches have been applied by past
researchers to determine the strategic location of new facility.
CO emissions.
2
Unlike FCM which is suitable for multiple facility
location problem, a geographical boundary needs to be pre-
assigned prior to COG and LSR analysis. Three decision
factors were considered: (a) state boundaries, (b) state/federal
road transportation network, (c) biomass processing capacity.
The distance from each BSP to BPF was set to be not more
than 100 km. In addition, the biomass supply was assumed to
always match the demand.
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