Integrated bioethanol supply chain planning from rice straw under various risks

The biofuel development from rice straw has the main benefit that preventing environmental problems of burning rice straw that leads to air pollution. Since the environmental impacts of fossil fuels have increased in recent years, the development of renewable energy sources has been on the rise. Sustainability and low environmental impact are some of the advantages of biofuel. On another hand, the previous studies on the bioethanol supply chain do not protect the disruptions and operational risks against the chain, simultaneously. This study presents a mixed-integer linear programming model for designing an integrated bioethanol supply chain network based on rice straw as a feedstock under operational and disruption risks. Due to disruption events, several parameters, including facilities’ capacity, demand, and cost, are uncertain. A novel robust stochastic-possibilistic approach is developed to deal with hybrid uncertainty. Effective scenario generation and reduction approaches based on Monte Carlo simulation are presented to prevent complex optimization models. The capability and practicality of the model are illustrated in a real case of Iran. The sensitivity analysis and computational results demonstrate that the proposed model and approach result in less conservatism and more flexible decisions compared to existing approaches. In addition, the proposed model is not limited to the case study and can be generalized to other countries.