Optimal Location for Renewable Gas Production and Distribution Facilities: Resource Planning and Management

Renewable energy contributes to the energy portfolios of many countries. One form of renewable energy is syngas which is generated from bio-residues. The focus of this paper is the biomass transportation and conversion network that covers the entire syngas (synthesis gas) production process from different biomass feedstocks to the end products. Specifically, we focus on the resource planning and management problem (a) to allocate different feedstocks to anaerobic digesters (reactors), (b) to determine number and locations of reactors in each region, (c) to determine number and locations of the condensers to liquefy syngas, and finally (d) to determine distribution network of syngas to demand points. We developed a mixed-integer, non-linear programming (MINLP) cost model to describe this resource planning wherein the constrained cost is minimized to find the optimal solutions for reactors and condensers locations. We identify optimal allocation of feedstocks to all reactors and the distribution of liquefied gas to distribution centers. We propose a new algorithm to search for an alternative between two sub-problems of the original MINLP. We verify the convergence of the algorithm to an optimal or sub-optimal solution by conducting various sets of numerical experiments using some real-world parameters.