SIZE OPTIMIZATION OF A BIOMASS TO LIQUID FUEL CONVERSION FACILITY WITHIN A BIOMASS SUPPLY CHAIN

Bioenergy and biobased products offer new opportunities for strengthening rural economies, enhancing environmental health, and providing a secure energy future. Realizing these benefits will require the development of many different biobased products and biobased production systems. The biomass feedstocks that will enable such development must be sustainable, widely available across many different regions, and compatible with industry requirements. The purpose of this research is to develop an economic model that will help decision makers identify the optimal size of a forest resource based biofuel production facility. The model must be applicable to decision makers anywhere, though the modeled case analysis will focus on a specific region; the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) of Michigan. This work will illustrate that several factors influence the optimal facility size. Further, this effort will reveal that the location of the facility does affect size. The results of the research show that an optimal facility size can be determined for a given location and are based on variables including forest biomass availability, transportation cost rate, and economy of scale factors. These variables acting alone and interacting together can influence the optimal size and the decision of where to locate the biofuel production facility. Further, adjustments to model variables like biomass resource and storage costs have no effect on facility size, but do affect the unit cost of the biofuel produced.

CAN CHINA USE ALTERNATIVE ENERGIES INSTEAD OF COAL TO PROVIDE MORE ELECTRICITY BY 2030?

Following the rapid growth of China's economy, energy consumption, especially electricity consumption of China, has made a huge increase in the past 30 years. Since China has been using coal as the major energy source to produce electricity during these years, environmental problems have become more and more serious. The research question for this paper is: "Can China use alternative energies instead of coal to produce more electricity in 2030?" Hydro power, nuclear power, natural gas, wind power and solar power are considered as the possible and most popular alternative energies for the current situation of China. To answer the research question above, there are two things to know: How much is the total electricity consumption in China by 2030? And how much electricity can the alternative energies provide in China by 2030? For a more reliable forecast, an econometric model using the Ordinary Least Squares Method is established on this paper to predict the total electricity consumption by 2030. The predicted electricity coming from alternative energy sources by 2030 in China can be calculated from the existing literature. The research results of this paper are analyzed under a reference scenario and a max tech scenario. In the reference scenario, the combination of the alternative energies can provide 47.71% of the total electricity consumption by 2030. In the max tech scenario, it provides 57.96% of the total electricity consumption by 2030. These results are important not only because they indicate the government's long term goal is reachable, but also implies that the natural environment of China could have an inspiring future.