Consideration of Environmental and Socio-economic Aspects …
49
starts operating and even before its construction. This could help in the selection of
an appropriate site ensuring that the biorefinery is both sustainable and embedded
at the territorial scale, thus minimizing environmental impact and guaranteeing the
best economic and social profits.
The problem addressed in this paper can be described as follows: a consortium of
industrial actors defined a new bio-based process to create biomolecules they believe
would have an interesting market potential. The process is actually at the sixth level
of Technology Readiness Level and the next development phase implies the study of
its industrial production, from a lab- to a biorefinery-scale. The goal of the project
is to study the construction of a new biorefinery facility or to integrate the defined
industrial process to an already-existing infrastructure. In addition to the technology
used, the candidate feedstock is also a given, other aspects of the biorefining value
chain are not identified. We therefore have the possibility of providing different
scenarios for the value chain stages (considering different feedstock production and
storage sites, transport modes and distances, …). The main goal of this work is to
select the optimal location for the new biorefinery/or identify where the industrial
process could be integrated into existing infrastructures. The final choice of the
biorefinery location will depend on the performance of the territory (three potential
territories are under study) in terms of a combination of its environmental, social and
economic parameters.
2 Optimal Sustainable Biorefinery Location: A Short
Literature Review
The question of optimal biorefinery location is not absolutely novel and it has already
been discussed by a significant number of studies (Marvin et al. 2012; SantibañezAguilar et al. 2014; Harvey and Pettersson 2014; Serrano-Hernandez et al. 2016;
López-Díaz et al. 2017; Ng and Maravelias 2017, etc.). Despite an increasing interest into this issue, there is at present no generally accepted methodology allowing
easy identification of the most important criteria to be considered. Nevertheless, we
propose to find out more about possible criteria discussed by the authors.
For example, Serrano-Hernandez et al. (2016) indicate that the location of biorefineries is a critical factor since many tactical and operational decisions depend on
it. The authors specify that the choice of the optimal location requires the analysis of
several factors, from many points of view, namely economic, social, technological,
commercial and environmental. However, within the case study presented, only the
environmental impacts of biorefinery location are discussed, based on the model’s
calculations. The authors highlight that for the best biorefinery location the environmental impacts should be minimized: the distances between the facility and tactical
sites (e.g. crop and stockage places) should be as short as possible.
Santibañez-Aguilar et al. (2014), identify among important criteria for biorefinery
location: the selection of raw materials (including their availability and seasonality),
49
starts operating and even before its construction. This could help in the selection of
an appropriate site ensuring that the biorefinery is both sustainable and embedded
at the territorial scale, thus minimizing environmental impact and guaranteeing the
best economic and social profits.
The problem addressed in this paper can be described as follows: a consortium of
industrial actors defined a new bio-based process to create biomolecules they believe
would have an interesting market potential. The process is actually at the sixth level
of Technology Readiness Level and the next development phase implies the study of
its industrial production, from a lab- to a biorefinery-scale. The goal of the project
is to study the construction of a new biorefinery facility or to integrate the defined
industrial process to an already-existing infrastructure. In addition to the technology
used, the candidate feedstock is also a given, other aspects of the biorefining value
chain are not identified. We therefore have the possibility of providing different
scenarios for the value chain stages (considering different feedstock production and
storage sites, transport modes and distances, …). The main goal of this work is to
select the optimal location for the new biorefinery/or identify where the industrial
process could be integrated into existing infrastructures. The final choice of the
biorefinery location will depend on the performance of the territory (three potential
territories are under study) in terms of a combination of its environmental, social and
economic parameters.
2 Optimal Sustainable Biorefinery Location: A Short
Literature Review
The question of optimal biorefinery location is not absolutely novel and it has already
been discussed by a significant number of studies (Marvin et al. 2012; SantibañezAguilar et al. 2014; Harvey and Pettersson 2014; Serrano-Hernandez et al. 2016;
López-Díaz et al. 2017; Ng and Maravelias 2017, etc.). Despite an increasing interest into this issue, there is at present no generally accepted methodology allowing
easy identification of the most important criteria to be considered. Nevertheless, we
propose to find out more about possible criteria discussed by the authors.
For example, Serrano-Hernandez et al. (2016) indicate that the location of biorefineries is a critical factor since many tactical and operational decisions depend on
it. The authors specify that the choice of the optimal location requires the analysis of
several factors, from many points of view, namely economic, social, technological,
commercial and environmental. However, within the case study presented, only the
environmental impacts of biorefinery location are discussed, based on the model’s
calculations. The authors highlight that for the best biorefinery location the environmental impacts should be minimized: the distances between the facility and tactical
sites (e.g. crop and stockage places) should be as short as possible.
Santibañez-Aguilar et al. (2014), identify among important criteria for biorefinery
location: the selection of raw materials (including their availability and seasonality),