Biofuel production: Fast pyrolysis units' manufacturing infrastructure

Biofuels are a replacement for fossil fuels that helps meet national, energy, environmental and economic security requirements. One type of the biofuel production is fast pyrolysis. The goal of this work is to develop an understanding of how fast pyrolysis units can be correctly sized to meet these security types in addition to other stakeholder perspectives and requirements. There are a lot of work in biofuel production; however, most of them are focused on a subset of these perspectives and requirements. Likewise, manufacturing requirements were also not typically studied. There has been some work investigating different sizes of fast pyrolysis units. The manufacturing of fast pyrolysis units is considered as a complex problem due to the stakeholders' diversity as well as the nature of this problem. The diversity of biofuel production stakeholders created different perspectives, requirements, and decisions. Therefore, the need arises to develop a systems-oriented approach for the manufacturing, placement, and optimal sizing of a fast pyrolysis units' manufacturing infrastructure for biofuel energy production. This research aims to illustrate the general framework and the strategic design for the development of the systems-oriented approach to reduce capital costs, investment risk, and increase units' flexibility to be more responsive to changes in energy demands. This designed decision-making approach in this work could be applied to other complex systems for decision-making under uncertainty.