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A framework for ammonia supply chain optimization incorporating conventional and renewable generation
Author(s) -
Allman Andrew,
Daoutidis Prodromos,
Tiffany Douglas,
Kelley Stephen
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
aiche journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.958
H-Index - 167
eISSN - 1547-5905
pISSN - 0001-1541
DOI - 10.1002/aic.15838
Subject(s) - supply chain , renewable energy , supply chain optimization , purchasing , renewable resource , environmental science , carbon tax , environmental economics , ammonia , production (economics) , business , natural resource economics , economics , supply chain management , engineering , operations management , chemistry , microeconomics , greenhouse gas , ecology , organic chemistry , marketing , electrical engineering , biology
Ammonia is an essential nutrient for global food production brought to farmers by a well‐established supply chain. This article introduces a supply chain optimization framework which incorporates new renewable ammonia plants into the conventional ammonia supply chain. Both economic and environmental objectives are considered. The framework is then applied to two separate case studies analyzing the supply chains of Minnesota and Iowa, respectively. The base case results present an expected trade‐off between cost, which favors purchasing ammonia from conventional plants, and emissions, which favor building distributed renewable ammonia plants. Further analysis of this trade‐off shows that a carbon tax above $25/t will reduce emissions in the optimal supply chain through building large renewable plants. The importance of scale is emphasized through a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis, as the largest scale renewable plants are selected most often in the optimal supply chain. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J , 63: 4390–4402, 2017