Sustainable supply chain network design for the production of biofuels underuncertainty

In recent years, the rising price of fossil fuels as well as thelimitations in supply, environmental pollution, and thegrowth in new technologies has attracted the attention ofpractitioners to renewable energies. Biofuel is made ofrenewable materials such as plant and animal wastes andcan be used in various sectors after combination withgeneral fuel. The main challenge of the supply chain of thebiologically produced energy is in applying a sustainable,affordable, and robust approach. In this study, the design ofa sustainable biofuel supply chain is investigated, and amixed integer linear programming model is presented whichis focused on optimizing the supply chain economically,environmentally, and socially. In addition, the model issolved for the real data from a case study in Iran. This paperstudy a multi-period problem which has four levels, threetransportation modes, two types of raw material, biorefinerywith three capacity levels. The blended fuel demand isconsidered as an uncertain parameter in this model. Therobust optimization method is used to confront theuncertainty, and the results are provided and analyzed for thedifferent levels of conservatism.

Keywords:

Biofuel supply chain network design , Sustainabledevelopment , Robust optimization , Blending