Abstract
Biomass supply chain performance is heavily affected by uncertainties
stemming from supply, demand, or unexpected disruptions. Unlike
petrochemical plants that use crude oil, biorefineries often have to
deal with the uneven spatial-temporal distribution of feedstock supply.
The modular production strategy provides more flexibility in chemical
manufacturing by allowing fast capacity expansion and unit movement.
However, modeling and optimizing modular biomass supply chain under
uncertainties becomes challenging due to high-dimensionality and the
existence of discrete decisions. This work optimizes the multiperiod
biomass supply chain using the rolling horizon planning and two-stage
stochastic programming framework. We then applied generalized Benders
decomposition to reduce the computational complexity of the stochastic
mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) supply chain optimization.
Furthermore, the solution of the stochastic programming could be used to
quantitatively describe the life-cycle assessment uncertainties of the
biomass supply chain performance, demonstrating seasonality and random
variability.