Analysis of global sustainability is incomplete without an examination of the FEW nexus. Here, we... more Analysis of global sustainability is incomplete without an examination of the FEW nexus. Here, we modify the Generalized Global Sustainability Model (GGSM) to incorporate the global water system and project water stress on the global and regional levels. Five key water-consuming sectors considered here are agricultural, municipal, energy, industry, and livestock. The regions are created based on the continents, namely, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. The sectoral water use intensities and geographical distribution of the water demand were parameterized using historical data. A more realistic and novel indicator is proposed to assess the water situation: net water stress. It considers the water whose utility can be harvested, within economic and technological considerations, rather than the total renewable water resources. Simulation results indicate that overall global water availability is adequate to support the rising water demand in the next cent...
This work proposes an innovative approach of watershed level mercury trading for sustainable mana... more This work proposes an innovative approach of watershed level mercury trading for sustainable management of mercury pollution. An optimization based decision-making framework has been developed to optimize the selection of mercury treatment technologies by industries in a watershed in the presence of nonlinearity and uncertainty in technology cost models. The impact of the regulation on technology selection by industries, often ignored in existing trading literature, has been quantified. A particularly novel contribution of this framework is the consideration of health care cost as an objective. The application of the framework to the Savannah River watershed case study in US emphasizes the importance of health care cost while evaluating the benefits of trading. Nonlinearity and uncertainty in the cost models is shown to significantly affect technology selection. The ecological perspective of innovation comes from the proposal of using water body liming to mitigate mercury bioaccumul...
2010 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 20 - June 23, 2010, 2010
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
2012 Dallas, Texas, July 29 - August 1, 2012, 2012
ABSTRACT To produce 16 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks by 2022, the biomass... more ABSTRACT To produce 16 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks by 2022, the biomass based ethanol industry will undergo significant changes in biomass supply and ethanol demand as compared to the current situation where few commercial facilities are operating. Strategic level decisions such as timings, locations, and capacities of facilities within the system will be critical for the success of the cellulosic based ethanol industry. These decisions will be impacted by biomass availability, production costs, and accessibility to transportation infrastructure. A multi-stage biomass supply chain optimization model was developed to answer these systems level questions. The model minimized the total ethanol production costs throughout the planning period (2012-2022) given the projected changes of biomass supply and ethanol demand. It was assumed that a planning decision should be made each year during the planning period. The decisions include the optimal installation timings, locations, and capacities of building new facilities and/or expanding the existing facilities, as well as the optimal biomass flow patterns between facilities within the system. The results of the optimal supply chain configuration suggest building large biorefineries with the support of many small/medium centralized storage and preprocessing facilities. The average Miscanthus-ethanol production costs are $0.66 L-1.
2011 Louisville, Kentucky, August 7 - August 10, 2011, 2011
The success of the bioenergy sector based on lignocellulosic feedstock will require a sustainable... more The success of the bioenergy sector based on lignocellulosic feedstock will require a sustainable and resilient transition from the current agricultural system focused on food crops to one also producing energy crops. The dynamics of this transition are not well ...
2011 Louisville, Kentucky, August 7 - August 10, 2011, 2011
A number of different agricultural crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass are under evaluation ... more A number of different agricultural crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass are under evaluation as potential biomass feedstock alternatives. Since agricultural operations are weather dependent, unfavorable weather can significantly impact the feedstock production as well as subsequent storage and supply activities. In particular, the systemic impact of regional weather patterns must be considered while developing and evaluating the feedstock harvest systems. This was achieved using the BioFeed modeling framework in this work. We developed the BioFeed model to simulate and optimize production and provision activities, including infrastructure requirements and operations, in regional biomass feedstock production systems. Weather effects are now incorporated in BioFeed with the inclusion of the probability of working day (pwd) parameter in the model. The pwd defines the fraction of days in a specific period such as two weeks that are suitable for field operations, and its value depends on a number of weather related parameters such as rainfall, snow depth, soil temperature, and soil moisture content. Model simulations were conducted for Miscanthus for values of pwd between 20%-100% and intended biorefinery capacities between 1000-6000 Mg d-1; and the impact on total cost and farm machinery requirements was quantified. Results indicated that if the harvest and handling system was designed assuming 100% pwd, lower pwd values exponentially increased the cost and decreased the biorefinery capacity that could be supported by the collection region. For Illinois with the average winter pwd of about 35%, ignoring weather patterns therefore led to 38% increase in total cost and 45% decrease in the supportable biorefinery capacity. BioFeed was then used to optimize the harvest system for a particular value of pwd. Simulation studies showed that this maintained the intended biorefinery capacity and led to a linear increase in total cost with decreasing pwd. The resulting optimum system required significantly larger fleet of farm machinery. For Illinois, the total cost increased by about 3.5%, but the total capital investment in farm machinery increased by almost 34%. These results emphasized that the consideration of weather impacts on farm productivity is extremely important when considering system design and operations.
The success of biomass based energy sector depends critically on an efficient, cost-effective and... more The success of biomass based energy sector depends critically on an efficient, cost-effective and sustainable biomass feedstock production system supporting the biorefinery. Spatially distributed collection of the low energy density feedstock demands a highly ...
Analysis of global sustainability is incomplete without an examination of the FEW nexus. Here, we... more Analysis of global sustainability is incomplete without an examination of the FEW nexus. Here, we modify the Generalized Global Sustainability Model (GGSM) to incorporate the global water system and project water stress on the global and regional levels. Five key water-consuming sectors considered here are agricultural, municipal, energy, industry, and livestock. The regions are created based on the continents, namely, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. The sectoral water use intensities and geographical distribution of the water demand were parameterized using historical data. A more realistic and novel indicator is proposed to assess the water situation: net water stress. It considers the water whose utility can be harvested, within economic and technological considerations, rather than the total renewable water resources. Simulation results indicate that overall global water availability is adequate to support the rising water demand in the next cent...
This work proposes an innovative approach of watershed level mercury trading for sustainable mana... more This work proposes an innovative approach of watershed level mercury trading for sustainable management of mercury pollution. An optimization based decision-making framework has been developed to optimize the selection of mercury treatment technologies by industries in a watershed in the presence of nonlinearity and uncertainty in technology cost models. The impact of the regulation on technology selection by industries, often ignored in existing trading literature, has been quantified. A particularly novel contribution of this framework is the consideration of health care cost as an objective. The application of the framework to the Savannah River watershed case study in US emphasizes the importance of health care cost while evaluating the benefits of trading. Nonlinearity and uncertainty in the cost models is shown to significantly affect technology selection. The ecological perspective of innovation comes from the proposal of using water body liming to mitigate mercury bioaccumul...
2010 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, June 20 - June 23, 2010, 2010
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical ... more The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an ...
2012 Dallas, Texas, July 29 - August 1, 2012, 2012
ABSTRACT To produce 16 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks by 2022, the biomass... more ABSTRACT To produce 16 billion gallons of ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks by 2022, the biomass based ethanol industry will undergo significant changes in biomass supply and ethanol demand as compared to the current situation where few commercial facilities are operating. Strategic level decisions such as timings, locations, and capacities of facilities within the system will be critical for the success of the cellulosic based ethanol industry. These decisions will be impacted by biomass availability, production costs, and accessibility to transportation infrastructure. A multi-stage biomass supply chain optimization model was developed to answer these systems level questions. The model minimized the total ethanol production costs throughout the planning period (2012-2022) given the projected changes of biomass supply and ethanol demand. It was assumed that a planning decision should be made each year during the planning period. The decisions include the optimal installation timings, locations, and capacities of building new facilities and/or expanding the existing facilities, as well as the optimal biomass flow patterns between facilities within the system. The results of the optimal supply chain configuration suggest building large biorefineries with the support of many small/medium centralized storage and preprocessing facilities. The average Miscanthus-ethanol production costs are $0.66 L-1.
2011 Louisville, Kentucky, August 7 - August 10, 2011, 2011
The success of the bioenergy sector based on lignocellulosic feedstock will require a sustainable... more The success of the bioenergy sector based on lignocellulosic feedstock will require a sustainable and resilient transition from the current agricultural system focused on food crops to one also producing energy crops. The dynamics of this transition are not well ...
2011 Louisville, Kentucky, August 7 - August 10, 2011, 2011
A number of different agricultural crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass are under evaluation ... more A number of different agricultural crops such as Miscanthus and switchgrass are under evaluation as potential biomass feedstock alternatives. Since agricultural operations are weather dependent, unfavorable weather can significantly impact the feedstock production as well as subsequent storage and supply activities. In particular, the systemic impact of regional weather patterns must be considered while developing and evaluating the feedstock harvest systems. This was achieved using the BioFeed modeling framework in this work. We developed the BioFeed model to simulate and optimize production and provision activities, including infrastructure requirements and operations, in regional biomass feedstock production systems. Weather effects are now incorporated in BioFeed with the inclusion of the probability of working day (pwd) parameter in the model. The pwd defines the fraction of days in a specific period such as two weeks that are suitable for field operations, and its value depends on a number of weather related parameters such as rainfall, snow depth, soil temperature, and soil moisture content. Model simulations were conducted for Miscanthus for values of pwd between 20%-100% and intended biorefinery capacities between 1000-6000 Mg d-1; and the impact on total cost and farm machinery requirements was quantified. Results indicated that if the harvest and handling system was designed assuming 100% pwd, lower pwd values exponentially increased the cost and decreased the biorefinery capacity that could be supported by the collection region. For Illinois with the average winter pwd of about 35%, ignoring weather patterns therefore led to 38% increase in total cost and 45% decrease in the supportable biorefinery capacity. BioFeed was then used to optimize the harvest system for a particular value of pwd. Simulation studies showed that this maintained the intended biorefinery capacity and led to a linear increase in total cost with decreasing pwd. The resulting optimum system required significantly larger fleet of farm machinery. For Illinois, the total cost increased by about 3.5%, but the total capital investment in farm machinery increased by almost 34%. These results emphasized that the consideration of weather impacts on farm productivity is extremely important when considering system design and operations.
The success of biomass based energy sector depends critically on an efficient, cost-effective and... more The success of biomass based energy sector depends critically on an efficient, cost-effective and sustainable biomass feedstock production system supporting the biorefinery. Spatially distributed collection of the low energy density feedstock demands a highly ...
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