Locating a biorefinery in Northern Spain: decision making and economic consequences

Abstract

Biofuels are emerging as a prominent renewable and sustainable energy sources in developed countries. In this sense, this paper presents a case study in which a biorefinery has to be sited in Northern Spain. Thus, the strategic decision of locating such a facility is deeply investigated through strategic policy evaluation. Then, tactical decisions ranging from purchasing and transportation policies to storage protocols are carried out. Only local and limited biomass can be harvested for supplying the biorefinery through a heterogeneous vehicle fleet. Moreover two different and mutually exclusive storage strategies are evaluated: direct supply from crops to biorefinery and using intermediate-collectors. Additionally, crop exploitation factors and biorefinery sizes are used to generate several scenarios in which the strategic decision of location as well as all the tactic decisions are made. Some mixed integer linear programming models are proposed to figure out all relevant decision problems. The results suggest that the Northwest study area as the best option to locate the biorefinery and recommend the intermediate-collector storage strategy. Moreover, the key information about critical biomass, crops and times are also provided.