Optimization Models for Integrated Biorefinery Operations

01/08/2021
by   Berkay Gulcan, et al.
0

Variations of physical and chemical characteristics of biomass lead to an uneven flow of biomass in a biorefinery, which reduces equipment utilization and increases operational costs. Uncertainty of biomass supply and high processing costs increase the risk of investing in the US's cellulosic biofuel industry. We propose a stochastic programming model to streamline processes within a biorefinery. A chance constraint models system's reliability requirement that the reactor is operating at a high utilization rate given uncertain biomass moisture content, particle size distribution, and equipment failure. The model identifies operating conditions of equipment and inventory level to maintain a continuous flow of biomass to the reactor. The Sample Average Approximation method approximates the chance constraint and a bisection search-based heuristic solves this approximation. A case study is developed using real-life data collected at Idaho National Laboratory's pilot biomass processing facility. An extensive computational analysis indicates that sequencing of biomass bales based on moisture level, increasing storage capacity, and managing particle size distribution increase utilization of the reactor and reduce operational costs.

READ FULL TEXT

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

research
11/03/2015

Artificial neural network approach for condition-based maintenance

In this research, computerized maintenance management will be investigat...
research
06/11/2020

A Stochastic Biomass Blending Problem in Decentralized Supply Chains

Blending biomass materials of different physical or chemical properties ...
research
11/15/2022

Spectral Heuristics Applied to Vertex Reliability

The operability of a network concerns its ability to remain operational,...
research
05/19/2022

Predictive Maintenance using Machine Learning

Predictive maintenance (PdM) is a concept, which is implemented to effec...
research
02/26/2018

Controlling Human Utilization of Failure-Prone Systems via Taxes

We consider a game-theoretic model where individuals compete over a shar...
research
11/27/2019

A Utilization Model for Optimization of Checkpoint Intervals in Distributed Stream Processing Systems

State-of-the-art distributed stream processing systems such as Apache Fl...

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset