Sustainability and Social Justice

An Interperiod Network Storage Location-Allocation (INSLA) Model for Rail Distribution of Ethanol Biofuels

Document Type

Article

Abstract

In response to the US federal renewable fuels standards, new ethanol plants of varying sizes are being established in the US. The transportation challenge is to decide on how best to move raw materials to these existing and new ethanol plants, and to ship the fuel from the ethanol plants to markets around the country. In this paper, we extend the Interperiod Network Storage Location-Allocation (INSLA) model formulation into a Rail-INSLA model to address the transportation/transshipment issues associated with the rail distribution of ethanol biofuels that include: transporting less than unit train quantities from each plant, developing new sidings at ethanol plants to accommodate a unit train, and determining the optimal number and locations for carrier operated terminals for the agglomeration of less than unit train size shipments into unit train shipments. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd.

Publication Title

Journal of Transport Geography

Publication Date

11-1-2010

Volume

18

Issue

6

First Page

729

Last Page

737

ISSN

0966-6923

DOI

10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2009.09.011

Keywords

ethanol logistics, multi-period optimization models, unit train

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