Supply Chain Design Network Model for Biofuels and Chemicals from Waste Cooking Oil

Abstract

Supply chain is an effective coordination and integration of all activities performed by several business lines with the aid of their infrastructures. Supply chain managing and designing teams should adopt the latest most effective scientific methods to locate facilities. Waste cooking oil (WCO) is dumped in swears and municipal drainages, causing a lot of problems. One of the most important uses of WCO is converting it to biodiesel. In Egypt case, a lot of barriers were found to initiate a plant producing biodiesel from WCO, as there is no collection supply chain system designed. Lack of public awareness led to the drawback of dumping WCO in municipal drains, causing sewer damage and water pollution. Only 35 % of wastewater in Egypt is purified before being dumped into the Nile River. This research generates a supply chain design model of three layered medium mixed integer linear programme for an application of biodiesel production from WCO. MATLAB Software with a Graphical User Interface programmed by the C SHARP C# programming software and EXCEL solver tools were used. CAPCOST tool was used to generate economic feasibility study. Scenarios are examined to price out and compare trade-offs potential solutions. Optimizing the operations are focused on chemical engineering unit operations, production process facilities as well as the entire supply chain.