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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jingxin DongORCiD, Professor Christian Hicks
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
It is estimated that 12-15% of total global industrial energy is consumed by the Cement Manufacturing Industry (CMI). To improve environmental sustainability, biomass has been used as an alternative to fossil fuels. There is a comprehensive literature on biomass production and conversion, but little attention has been paid to biomass logistics in the cement industry. We propose the use of cement distribution trucks to collect biomass on their return journeys. Compared with the use of specialist biomass suppliers, the collection of biomass via cement distribution networks has greater uncertainties in delivery times, volume and quality. This is because biomass collection is a secondary activity and is subject to cement order quantities and the random geographical locations of cement customers. To cope with these uncertainties, additional on-site storage and handling equipment is required. This paper proposes a stochastic programming model to measure the cost-effectiveness of collecting biomass using return cement distribution trucks in comparison with purchasing biomass from specialised biomass suppliers. A numerical experiment based on a real-word dataset has been conducted to verify the effectiveness of the developed model. It is shown that the use of cement distribution networks is more cost effective than using specialised suppliers.
Author(s): Abriyantoroa D, Dong J, Hicks C, Singh SP
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Energy Journal
Year: 2019
Volume: 169
Issue: 15
Pages: 515-526
Print publication date: 15/02/2019
Online publication date: 03/12/2018
Acceptance date: 25/11/2018
Date deposited: 25/11/2018
ISSN (print): 0360-5442
ISSN (electronic): 1873-6785
Publisher: International Association for Energy Economics
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.11.114
DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2018.11.114
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