MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION OF THE SUGARCANE-BASED BIOETHANOL SUPPLY CHAIN USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

JONATHAN WHEELER; FERNANDO DANIEL MELE; PEDRO JESÚS COPADO MÉNDEZ; GONZALO GUILLÉN-GOSÁLBEZ

Lima

Conferencia; Sixth International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment - CILCA2015; 2015

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Instituto de Ciencias de la Naturaleza, Territorio y Energías Renovables (INTE-PUCP)

This work addresses the need for a structured and comprehensive methodology for assessing the environmental performance of the sugarcane-based bioethanol production chain in Argentina. The Life-Cycle Assessment is chosen as a suitable tool for carrying out this task. Moreover, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used as the basic framework for providing the necessary weighting factors to consider simultaneously an economic indicator together with several environmental indexes. The purpose of this work is to present a quantitative tool to support decision-making in the area of optimal design of supply chains (SC) for the combined production of sugar and ethanol. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that seeks to optimize simultaneously the economic and environmental performance of the production chain. Results of the multi-objective optimization approach are compared with a single-objective approach which uses a set of AHP-based weighting factors in the objective function. The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches presented are illustrated through its application to a case study, in which a trade-off exists between the economic and environmental performance of the network. Our method demonstrates in which degree the multi-objective optimization could be replaced by the single-objective approach. Some comments on the importance of systematic methods to derive weighting factors for the weighting stage within an LCA study are driven as well.