Network design and technology management for waste to energy production: An integrated optimization framework under the principles of circular economy

Şebnem Yılmaz Balaman, Daniel G. Wright, James Scott, Aristides Matopoulos

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The design of waste to bioenergy supply chains (W-BESC) is critically important for meeting the circular economy (CE) goals, whilst also ensuring environmental sustainability in the planning and operation of energy systems. This study develops a novel optimization methodology to aid sustainable design and planning of W-BESC that comprise multiple technologies as well as multiple product and feedstock types. The methodology identifies the optimum supply chain configuration and plans the logistics operations in a given region to meet the energy demand of specified nodes. A scenario based fuzzy multi objective modelling approach is proposed and utilized to capture the economic and environmental sustainability aspects in the same framework. We test the proposed model using the entire West Midlands (WM) region from the United Kingdom (UK) as a case study. In this scope, a comprehensive regional supply chain is designed to meet the energy and biofertilizer demand of specific nodes considering available waste and crop type biomass in the region. Further analysis is conducted to reveal the impacts of main economic and technological parameters on the supply chain performance indicators.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)911-933
JournalEnergy
Volume143
Early online date11 Nov 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2018

Bibliographical note

© 2017, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Keywords

  • Waste to energy supply chains
  • Network design
  • Technology management
  • Mathematical modelling
  • Fuzzy multi objective decision making

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