Location planning for production of bioethanol fuel from agricultural residues in the south of Caspian Sea

Utilization of renewable energies such as biofuels is rapidly progressing in many countries for environmental protection reasons. The surge of global energy demand and environmental concerns has led to greater desire to replace fossil fuels with clean and renewable fuels. One of the best substitutes to the gasoline is bioethanol. The main advantage of bioethanol is the environmentally-friendly nature of this fuel; which is produced sustainably from the nature. This study examines the potential of producing bioethanol from agricultural residues such as rice straw, wheat straw, barley straw, rice hulls, maize fodder, sugarcane bagasse and cotton stalks in the Mazandaran province in the south of Caspian Sea in Iran. This is the first time which a thorough study has been performed for this purpose in the south of Caspian Sea. The study evaluates 13 major cities of the province to find the best location for installing a bioethanol production plant. The evaluation is performed with the use of Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) methods. The Borda ranking method is used to summarize and suggest a single final location. Results show that the Mazandaran province has great bioethanol production potential although the Babol city ranks first for the bioethanol production plant development. The methodology described in this research provides future oriented and pro-active methods for convincing, professionals, policy makers, and management in order to decide and locate the best site for production of bioethanol fuel.