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Wind energy (WE) is a volatile source of electricity production. In France and worldwide, the development of renewable energy sources (RES) is increasing the cost of the energy system; these will increase further to reach the WE target of 33.2 GW of installed capacity by 2028. Moreover, intermittency decreases as the installed capacity is geographically dispersed, hence the importance of investigating distributed wind deployment strategies in complementary locations. However, identifying potential wind energy locations that provide complementarity is challenging, especially given the inherent chaotic nature of wind during time. The objective of this research is to propose an adequate methodology to cluster wind time series (TS) to provide insights on smart planning considering distributed wind energy (WE) production. Results reveal that Shape Based Distance (SBD) classifiers perform best in clustering TS and appear relevant in identifying potential wind complementary locations in France. Ultimately, intermittency measures show that, in the case of complementary wind locations, availability (AVA) can increase by about 31% and the variability can decrease by about 30%. • Clustering wind time series, using a reproducible method, led to the identification of wind complementary locations. • Wind speeds are recorded by weather stations across northwest and southeast of France. • Benchmark of three instance-based clustering techniques using cluster validity index. • Clusters with negative and near-zero correlation exhibit promising potential for complementarity. • Complementary wind parks identification serves as an important step for planning future distributed wind power generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

H 2 is an important commodity chemical that can also be used as an alternative fuel. The way how H 2 is currently produced and distributed, however, is not compatible with this usage. This is primarily due to the high costs associated with storing and delivering H 2 from the centralized production facilities to the end-use sites like H 2 stations that will be distributed throughout a region. Here, we propose a methodology for configuring the distributed H 2 production system that minimizes the overall cost in delivering H 2 to demand sites while meeting the safety requirements. The methodology also takes into account changes in costs with respect to production volume by applying the concept of economy of scale. The proposed methodology is applied to a hypothetical case involving H 2 supply to three stations. The results demonstrate significant reduction in the overall cost when adopting the optimal solution found by our methodology compared to the traditional, centralized production system. Insights on the cost structures associated with producing and delivering H 2 are provided, as well as specific improvements required to make H 2 affordable at the level defined by the international society. • A new methodology for configuring sizes and layout of distributed H 2 production system. • Comparative analysis between the centralized and distributed H 2 production system. • Costs of various H 2 production technologies and sensitivity analyses of key parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural food production systems are essential to face current and future climate, food security and nutrition challenges. Several novel urban agriculture production concepts are utilizing symbiotic production and distributed/urban production principles to address these challenges. Life cycle engineering can support the planning and design of production systems and help to identify hotspots and avoid problem shifting. In this work the authors identify the factors resulting from symbiotic, distributed and enclosed food production, influencing life cycle inventory modelling for life cycle assessment. Based on the influencing factors a life cycle inventory modelling framework is proposed and the application pathway is illustrated by an in-development production system called CUBES Circle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

First industrial-scale Power-to-Methanol plants are starting to be deployed in various geographic locations to tackle the problem of high greenhouse gas emissions of the predominantly fossil-based production of methanol. With the aim to speed up the deployment by streamlining their engineering and construction, we explore the potential of reducing the complexity of designs to be distributed across locations with different renewable energy conditions. A multi-objective optimization-based method incorporating a broad process network for early-stage process synthesis is proposed, which by determining the installed capacities of technologies from the chemical production, utility and storage subsystems, identifies alternative designs with different levels of complexity along two dimensions: 1) the number of different technologies used, 2) standardization of designs across different locations. The method was applied to case studies, which paired together design locations with either wind- or solar-dominant renewable resource conditions in the US and Chile for standardization. As per the method, the increases of methanol production costs due to reduced design flexibility, inherently bound to complexity reduction, were quantified and Pareto fronts were constructed. These uncovered the possibility to significantly reduce the complexity of the designs with only small increases of the production costs. By comparing the results of the case studies under different cost and operation scenarios, we characterized general aspects, which need to be considered for such design simplification. One of the main outcomes were the quantified cost-increases due to standardization, which were around 7 and 15 % relative to the specifically designed plants for each location in the US and Chile case studies respectively. A subsequent analysis of the economies of numbers through learning rates reported in academic literature suggested that the proposed standardization, even across extremely different locations, could compensate these cost-increases and be economically beneficial. Yet, more specific data on achievable cost-reductions are needed, requiring more interaction with the industry and further research, for which we highlighted promising directions. [Display omitted] • Method to identify standard and simple design of Power-to-Methanol processes. • Standardization across locations can affect technology selection. • Transfer of the complexity of design into the complexity of fluctuating operation. • Pareto-optimal design with thermal energy storage parabolic troughs, heat pump. • Important to consider the locations, which should share a standard design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the New Millennium, increasingly widespread availability of the Internet and digitally enabled tools have made production processes more accessible to private individuals, introducing new opportunities for personal fabrication and social manufacturing. Yet scant sustainability research has been conducted on this important sector. We argue that research barriers, particularly relating to confusing terminology and lack of individual-centric analytical tools, are largely responsible for this void. The objective of this study is to overcome these barriers by (1) providing an integrating framework that can improve transferability, to other conceptual analyses, of the results of sustainability research conducted from a particular conceptual viewpoint, and (2) suggesting how some firm-centric analytical tools can be modified for effective use in studies of individual-level phenomena. We base our framework on the emerging concept of social manufacturing, first eliciting its main aspects and dimensions with a conceptual literature study, and then discovering its central properties with an empirical case study. We conclude by using the new social manufacturing framework to suggest modifications of three common sustainability analysis tools to make them more applicable to research on individual-level production. By making future investigation in this area more accessible our work contributes to both sustainability research and to the emerging field of research on social manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ammonia is a critical chemical to fertilize plants and feed the world. Recently, a first of its kind renewable ammonia plant has been built in Morris, MN, powered by wind energy. A broader deployment of such renewable plants will require careful selection of location and unit sizing to keep costs low and optimize the entire ammonia supply chain. In this paper, a 48-h receding horizon optimization problem is developed to optimally schedule unit set points for the system in order to minimize annual operating costs. This optimization formulation is then used to examine how the optimal operating cost depends on the key design parameters of location and unit size. Using the results obtained, simple correlations are developed which capture the dependence of operating costs on ratios of unit capacities, properly scaled to remove the dependence on location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being "carbon efficient" is always one of the missions for suppliers to stay competitive. Production and distribution are the core sections of the supply chain, and integrated scheduling of production and distribution has received increasing research interest because of its great potential to enhance operational performance. Distributed production has gained popularity in recent years. However, distribution strategies compatible with distributed production have not been considered. In this paper, we investigated carbon-efficient integrated scheduling of distributed production and distribution considering shared transportation resource. Particularly, the shared transportation resource strategy, which allows vehicles to serve customers from various depots, enables a more flexible distribution than the traditional method. A bi-objective model is constructed to minimize total carbon emission and completion time simultaneously. To address the computational challenge, an enhanced multi-objective teaching–learning-based optimization (EMTLBO) algorithm is proposed. In EMTLBO, several heuristic rules are introduced to obtain high-quality initial solutions and neighborhood structures are designed for efficient neighborhood search. The comprehensive experiments have demonstrated that (1) the proposed enhancement strategies are effective, (2) the overall performance of EMTLBO is superior to seven well-known algorithms in solving this problem, and (3) the shared transportation resource strategy considerably reduces carbon emission during distribution stage, leading to average decreasing of 41.0 %, 70.6 %, and 41.5% for the instance sets. This work presents significance in promoting a clean and efficient modern supply chain. • The proposed scenario is of great significance for a cleaner supply chain. • Decision relevance of distributed production and distribution is highlighted. • A bi-objective mixed-integer programming model is proposed. • A multi-objective algorithm with enhanced performance is developed. • Effectiveness of proposed shared transportation resource strategy is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ammonia synthesis is the most important step for nitrogen-fertilizer production and consumes approximately 1% of the world’s energy production and energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to the concomitant emissions caused by ammonia and nitrogen fertilizer synthesis, centrally produced fertilizer that must be distributed to farms also harms the environment because of the embodied energy of transportation. An environmentally-optimal nitrogen fertilizer system would be distributed on farms themselves using only renewable inputs. Recent developments in solar photovoltaic technology and subsystems for ammonia production have made non-organic on-site ammonia production physically possible. This study provides a technical evaluation of the process for on-site nitrogen-fertilization of corn using solar photovoltaic electricity as the energy input. The system consists of a water electrolysis system to generate hydrogen and a membrane system to generate nitrogen needed as material inputs. Total power consumption for syngas preparation to generate a unit of ammonia is calculated. System total energy consumption is calculated while compensating syngas preparation with heat recovery. Five case-study locations are evaluated to determine their suggested nitrogen fertilizer addition (N-rate) for corn growth and the energy consumption for suggested N-rate is calculated. The System Advisor Model (SAM) is then used to simulate the PV system output for those five locations. Finally, the PV land use required as a fraction of the corn field area is determined. The results indicate that because PV is so much more efficient at solar energy conversion than organic methods, even the worst case evaluated in Indiana requires less than 1% of the corn field converted to a PV system to provide enough energy to generate sufficient amounts of ammonia for fertilizer for the remaining corn. The system was modeled to provide ammonia to fertilize for corn fields larger than 1079 acres with the worst soil conditions, the area of which applies to more than half of cropland in the U.S. in 2011. As the finiteness and emissions of fossil fuel production of nitrogen become more important, this renewable system should become economical and future investigations into its overall viability are warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an integrated literature review on how the environmental sustainability of distributed production is studied in a variety of disciplinary sources. The notion of distributed production suggests an alternative to mass production that differs in scale, location and consumer–producer relationship. Understanding its environmental implications (and thereby dematerialization potential) is regarded pertinent and timely. Key themes in the review included how distributed production can promote product longevity and closed material loops, as well as localizing production. New and closer ties between producer and consumer seemed central discussions but were underdeveloped with regard to sustainability potential. Empirical work was seen especially in research on Additive Manufacturing Processes, while the bulk of the studies were conceptual explorations with little testing in the real world as yet. This affirms the emerging nature of the topic and points to a clear need for more (and more diverse) empirical research. The review summarizes the opportunities for greater environmental sustainability as well as potential threats that could serve to guide and improve these novel practices today. It sets the stage for ‘distributed production’ to be examined as its own phenomenon by proposing how it can be characterized and suggests that a research agenda could build upon the work initiated here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper strives to provide a theoretical study for energy production and distribution. We thus examine and discuss the evolution of energy systems technologies and their impact on the global socio-economic structure. We critically analyze the evolution of the energy production infrastructure and then review the renewable and decentralized energy production technologies, while focusing on the concept of microgrids. Ultimately, we propose an alternative model, inspired by the commons-oriented practices, currently observed in the production of information, that utilizes microgrids in order to create a peer-to-peer energy grid and then discuss the conditions necessary for the “energy commons” to emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The requirements for chemical and food production technologies will change in the future as a result of shorter time to market and increasing market volatility. Especially the rising use of renewable resources will require the implementation of flexible and fast to install small-scale production technologies. The increasing number of necessary apparatuses and their distributed operation, however, will constitute major challenges, both economically and procedurally. The proposed solution to face the economic challenge is modularization and standardization. For food production, dewatering represents a key issue. Thus, biomass processing should first be divided into small-scale water separation steps and then into further large-scale processing steps. As dewatering usually happens thermally and heat exchangers often benefit from the economies of scale, heat supply and energy consumption or heat transfer with little capital investment are further issues. Therefore, temperature levels should be decreased and the use of solar heat increased. For the production of biofuels and chemicals from biomass, process integration and process simplification are proposed to improve the efficacy of production equipment and processes. Choosing raw materials with molecular structures, similar to the desired chemical building block, will lower the need for heat exchange and make small-scale manufacturing of fuels and chemicals possible. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• This work studies an integrated distributed flow shop scheduling and distribution problem. • A mixed integer programming model is given to describe this problem mathematically. • An enhanced brain storm optimization algorithm is designed. • Optimal solutions are obtained by using mathematical programming solvers. • State-of-the-art results are acquired by the designed approach. Production and distribution are two essential activities in supply chain management. Currently, integrated production and distribution problems receive much attention because decision-makers devote to improving the operation efficiency of both stages and try to achieve an optimal solution. This work proposes an integrated distributed production and distribution problem with consideration of time windows, in which a set of jobs (i.e., customer orders) needs to be assigned among factories and the jobs are processed on flow shop environments at their associated factories. Then, the completed jobs are delivered by capacitated vehicles to customers in different regions while satisfying given time windows as much as possible. Accordingly, to optimally solve the proposed problem, a mixed integer programming model with minimizing total weighted earliness and tardiness has been established. For the optimization task, an enhanced brain storm optimization algorithm with some particular strategies is designed to handle the considered problem. To assess the performance of the proposed optimization method, several experiments by adopting a set of benchmark test problems are performed, and state-of-the-art optimizers are chosen for comparisons. The obtained optimization results exhibit that the designed algorithm significantly outperforms its rivals and can be considered as an excellent optimizer for solving the studied problem. Besides, compared with the CPLEX solver, the designed optimizer also performs much better for solving large-size problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the concept of sustainability is emerging as one of the main concerns in modern society. In this context, industrial production processes are changing thanks to the development of green strategies. The selection of a new production solution is a crucial strategic decision and the introduction of new technologies could cause deep changes to the entire supply chain configuration. This paper introduces a new approach designed to understand the importance of supply chain considerations for a suitable technology assessment. It is aimed at proposing a quantitative model for the evaluation of different structure of supply chains based on different production technologies. In particular, by defining a set of Key Performance Indicators and applying a multi-criteria decision method, a final score is computed, giving important information about both environmental and economic aspects. A numerical example regarding the comparison between Additive and Traditional Manufacturing processes is presented in order to demonstrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show that additive solutions bring evident reduction in Carbon Emission and better supply chain and logistics performance. Anyway, production volume strongly influences the economic results and the competitiveness of additive manufacturing remains limited when compared to the traditional manufacturing. • The paper introduces a new approach focused on the importance of the supply chain configuration in a green technology evaluation. • The Additive technology confirms to provide environmental benefits, also improving logistics and supply chain performance. • The production volumes influence the economic results limiting the competitiveness of additive manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]