3 Presentations

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  10:30 AM - 10:55 AM

  A review of the forest-based biomass supply chain planning

  • Salma Jahani, presenter, The University of British Columbia
  • Taraneh Sowlati, Department of Wood Science, University of British Columbia

  The forest-based biomass has the potential to provide economic, environmental, and social benefits by producing renewable products, however, managing its supply chain is a challenging task due to variations in biomass moisture content, biomass availability and cost, and bio-products demand and prices. Moreover, wood residues have a low bulk density and are dispersed over large areas which increase its logistics costs. This presentation provides a review of the literature on forest-based biomass supply chain planning. Optimization models have been developed for managing forest-biomass procurement, transportation, storage, pre-processing and bioproducts production. The studies cover different planning levels: short-term, medium-term and long-term. Furthermore, biomass quality, uncertainties, and multiple-objectives have been addressed in previous studies using mixed integer linear programming, stochastic programming and multi-objective models, respectively. Overall, the literature review highlights the importance of taking a holistic and integrated approach to optimize the forest-based biomass supply chain considering sustainability aspects, policies, variations and uncertainties.
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  10:55 AM - 11:20 AM

  Integration of Biomass Value Chains for Optimizing the Supply Chain of Bioenergy: The FlexSNG Project

  • Seyyedeh Rozita Ebrahimi, presenter, University Laval
  • Mikael Rönnqvist, University Laval
  • Paul Stuart, Polytechnique Montréal University

  Keywords: Bioenergy, Biorefinery, Biomass value chain, Forestry biomass, Agricultural biomass, Municipal solid waste biomass, Coordination, Collaboration, Integration of value chains
  Bioenergy is a sustainable source of energy that reduces dependency on fossil fuels and petroleum, with positive impacts on the environment, society, and economy. FlexSNG is a gasification-based concept for the flexible production of intermediate bioenergy carriers (biomethane and biochar) and renewable heat, with significant cost reductions achieved through the optimization of feedstock supply chains. The supply chain optimization involves cross-chain collaboration between different feedstock value chains (forestry biomass, agriculture, and municipalities), co-handling of forest and agro-residues, increased coordination of logistics, and collaboration between different companies. The FlexSNG technology can be integrated into medium-scale biomass industries and communal CHP plants in rural and agricultural areas, as well as scaled up to large plants. The three main biomass value chains are forestry, agricultural, and municipal solid waste (MSW). Coordination between these value chains is necessary for a uniform biomass flow in the supply chain. Achieving supply chain integration and cost reductions will improve the market uptake of the FlexSNG technology and accelerate the deployment of sustainable biomethane and biochar.
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  11:20 AM - 11:45 AM

  Integrated assessment of the impact of biomass hubs in improving the efficiency and resilience of bioenergy supply chains (CANCELED)

  • Mahsa Valipour, presenter, Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
  • Fereshteh Mafakheri, École nationale d’administration publique (ENAP), Université du Québec, Montreal, Canada
  • Chun Wang, Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

  The biomass supply chain plays a critical role in supporting sustainable energy production, particularly in the context of transitioning away from fossil fuels. The heterogeneous nature of biomass, along with seasonality and scattered geographical distribution of the feedstock makes the biomass supply chain (BSC) more vulnerable to uncertainties and disruptions. Hence, the efficiency and resilience of the BSC are highly dependent on the availability and management of biomass resources. Establishing hubs can provide a buffer against fluctuations in biomass availability by consolidating the resource and allowing different sorting and pre-treatment approaches. However, determining the capacity of these hubs during the entire planning horizon would be a complex problem as several endogenous and exogenous variables affect the amount of supply and demand over time. To this end, this research focuses on dynamic capacity planning of hubs considering future supply and demand scenarios. In this regard, recent advances in modeling approaches, especially simulation techniques, have made it possible to develop a framework for imitating real-world situations and consequently come up with more realistic planning. As such, system dynamics modeling could be a well-suited approach for this study as the objective function, constraints, and external drivers are varying over time, and there are circular causal relationships in the model affecting the interactions among components of the problem.