Abstract
This paper presents a systematic approach for the synthesis of biomass processing networks. Biomass refers to any renewable organic matter such as agricultural crops and residue, wood and wood waste, animal waste, and organic components of municipal and industrial wastes. The purpose of the proposed approach is to determine the optimal interconnection of processing units (equipment items) as well as the optimal type and design of the units within a biomass conversion system. Specifically, this paper studies the use of a dynamic programming approach based on an implicit enumeration algorithm that is known to be computationally efficient. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a simple synthesis problem involving the conversion of woody biomass is presented that includes biomass physical properties models, as well as gas turbine, drier, and downdraft-gasifier models.
