Biofuel supply chain restructuring -- An economic viability and environmental sustainability investigation for enhancing second generation biofuel adoption

Biofuel is a promising clean alternative to fossil fuels. Currently, first generation biofuels are commercially produced by using corn grain as biomass feedstock. However, the use of edible matter of crops, may lead to a competition between food and fuel. Therefore, there is a significant push in both industry and academia to commercialize second generation biofuel manufacturing technology, which uses non-edible matter from crops. Most research focuses on individual manufacturing processes for producing second generation biofuel, but the economic and environmental impacts of a large-scale adoption of second generation biofuel manufacturing have been less widely reported. This work investigates the optimization of first generation biofuel supply chain, and the switch to second generation biofuel supply chain, as a systems architecture optimization problem. First, first generation biofuel supply chain is modelled as a complex system of systems architecture with multiple stakeholders. After this, an initial study of critical process parameters in second generation biofuel manufacturing is conducted, and its environmental feasibility is investigated through a case study. Next, two strategies of switching from first generation to second generation supply chain architectures are explored. The mixed integer linear programming formulations of three supply chain models in two strategies are proposed to examine the performance from both economic and environmental perspectives. The models are validated through a case study based on the data extracted from the state of Missouri. The results indicate that although a large-scale adoption of second generation biofuel manufacturing is economically attractive, it will lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions --Abstract, page iii