PCA Method for Debottlenecking of Sustainability Performance in Integrated Biomass Supply Chain

Abstract

This paper presents a novel debottlenecking approach which incorporates principal component analysis (PCA) that can be used to identify sustainability bottlenecks at planning phase (it can be in the form of economic, environmental or social dimensions) and subsequently remove them. Debottlenecking at this preliminary stage (configuration of a system or a plant is yet to be confirmed) aims to reveal root causes that made a given system or design become unpreferable, and subsequently revamping it to improve its overall preferability. It is vital for better insight into a given system or design which enables accurate decision-making at conceptual design stage. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by using a palm biomass supply chain case study in Johor, Malaysia. The results show that the proposed debottlenecking method is capable to identify the sustainability bottlenecks of the research problem easily and efficiently. Aside from this, the proposed debottlenecking approach is benchmarked with a P-graph-aided debottlenecking approach which was developed in the previous work. On top of that, the strengths and limitations of these debottlenecking methods are discussed in this paper. This debottlenecking approach is essentially a guide for decision-makers (e.g. researchers, design engineers, project engineers etc.) during planning phase of the biomass industry development.