Prof. Edwin Zondervan

Bremen University, Germany

Title: Design of bio-based supply chains

Abstract

The biomass feedstock is geographically dispersed and subject to variability. Therefore, strategic supply chain design can significantly influence the economic viability of bio-derived products. Preprocessing through decentralized fast pyrolysis facilities followed by centralized upgrading has recently gained a lot of attention because it limits costly biomass transportation. In this work, a modeling framework that captures the main characteristics of bio-based supply chains has been developed to investigate cost-optimal system configurations. The model provides a valuable tool to determine the optimal area that the supply chain must cover. Furthermore, optimisation results indicate that through the geographical concentration of biomass sources the profitability of the supply chain is increased enormously, and that preprocessing followed by upgrading is no longer by definition the preferred processing strategy. However, further analysis revealed that under uncertain scenarios the clustering of biomass sources has a slight adverse effect on the robustness of the supply chain.

Biography

Edwin Zondervan has completed his PhD in 2007 at Groningen University, the Netherlands. He currently holds a professorship of process systsems engineering at the department of production engineering of Bremen University in Germany. Over the years he has published more than 100 papers in several journals, has presented his work as numerous conferences and has (co-) authored several books and book chapters.