Robust design and operations of hydrocarbon biofuel supply chain integrating with existing petroleum refineries considering unit cost objective

This paper addresses the optimal design and planning of the advanced hydrocarbon biofuel supply chain with the unit cost objective. Benefited from the drop-in properties of advanced hydrocarbon biofuels, the supply chain takes advantage of the existing petroleum infrastructure, which may lead to significant capital and transportation savings. A mixed-integer linear programming model is proposed to simultaneously consider the supply chain design, integration strategy selection, and production planning. A robust optimization approach which tradeoffs the performance and conservatism is adopted to deal with the demand and supply uncertainty. Moreover, the unit cost objective makes the final products more cost-competitive. The resulting mixed-integer linear fractional programming model is solved by tailored optimization algorithm. County level cases in Illinois are analyzed and compared to show the advantage of the proposed optimization framework. The results show that the preconversion to petroleum-upgrading pathway is more economical when applying the unit cost objective. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.