Biomass feedstock supply chain design - a taxonomic review and a decomposition-based methodology.

Sun, Fangzhou; Ramachandran, Rahul; Sarin, Subhash C.; Aguayo, Maichel M.

In this paper, we present a taxonomic review of the literature devoted to the use of operations research approaches for the design and operation of biomass feedstock supply chains (BFSCs). A total of 185 publications that have appeared from 1989 to 2017 are classified based on (1) the embedded optimisation subproblems; (2) the modelling methodologies used for their formulations; and (3) the methods employed for their solution. Our objective of using this classification scheme is to highlight the presence of some useful substructures in a BFSC problem that can, then, be exploited in developing its solution procedure. We illustrate this idea on some generic BFSC problems and present a Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition-based methodology for developing customised approaches to effectively tackle these difficult and large-sized BFSC problems. Finally, we suggest several promising future research directions.

BIOMASS chemicals; SUPPLY chains; INDUSTRIAL efficiency; OPERATIONS research; LOGISTICS; ENERGY Independence & Security Act of 2007

International Journal of Production Research, 2018, Vol 56, Issue 17, p5626

0020-7543

Academic Journal

10.1080/00207543.2018.1475766