Continental Biorefinery Supply Networks for the Production and Supply of Transportation Fuels

The transportation sector plays a crucial role within and between economies and has also important impact on the environment. Presently it relies almost exclusively on petroleum-based fuels. Due to the potential of renewable energies on the reduction of environmental impacts, dependency on energy imports, lowering the energy costs and increase of the security of energy supply, renewable energies are considered as a great opportunity towards more sustainable transportation. For those reasons, governments in several countries set important goals and targets to increase the share of renewables in the final consumption of energy regarding transport. In the short-term only biofuels from biomass could provide an alternative that can be implemented, and thus bioethanol and biodiesel have become the more promising alternatives.

This work presents the application of the generic multi-period model for efficient synthesis of biorefinery supply networks at the continental level. The model which was previously developed by authors, has been upgraded by different model reduction techniques and applied cross-regionally exploring specific regional characteristics for the production and supply of biofuels. Several the most advances biofuels production technologies are considered, which have been previously modelled in details and optimised by authors. They are now embedded within the biorefinery supply networks as surrogate models in order to handle the complexity of large-scale supply networks. Economically-optimal solutions are obtained by considering sustainable biomass production while preventing the usage of food for energy. From the results it is possible to answer to which extent the directives on renewable energy consumption within transportation sector can be satisfied, and also what share of renewables can be sustainably produced within studied geographic areas.