A Plan For Two Biochar Co-Op Facilities In Two Oregon Regions
Chris Harding
JWMI Graduate Student | Retired Chemical Engineer | Affiliate Member at MIT Alumni For Climate Action with expertise in Climate Action | Friend of Johns Hopkins University Energy Policy and Climate
This is a great video [V] that John P. O'Connell shared! It shows that farmers can be brilliant stewards of the land. I plan to share it widely.
I got excited about my class project (25% of the grade; Assignment 3), which will be employee scheduling optimization and single source capacitated facility location problem (SSCFLP) optimization[1-3]. The key is how much Oregon State Extension will work with me to identify farm locations throughout the Southern Coast of Oregon and the mid-southern valley of the I-5 corridor. There are quite a few vineyards as well.
Ideally, I would use variable demand [1], but I don't think I can master the mathematics and MATLAB programming of variable demand in 4 weeks. So, I will use constant demand [2-3] for my project and concentrate on variable demand for the future, I have already done example calculations to validate my method [3-4], and the course project is due 4 weeks from this Monday.
I plan to locate farms; I found a Pacific Biochar article that gives average shipping cost, profit margins, etc., and then use SSCFLP to find the most profitable location on the Southern coast, Bandon or Gold Beach, and the most profitable location in the valley, Grants Pass, Roseburg, and Eugene. In the future, I will focus on those two locations.
I have limited time. Therefore, I can't do an exhaustive transportation analysis for each farm from each potential production site location. I will use random generation to select an equal sample for each for the course project. Later, I will take the time to gather the data for each farm so that I can do a proper analysis for a facility locator.
In the future, I will attempt to elicit a collaboration among farmers by creating a co-op on the coast and a co-op in the valley. I expect this to take much effort, but if the farmers collaborate, they can pay for the capital expenses and locate the spouted-bed processes at the facility location of the city of choice. That is the ideal scenario, which an intelligent female from LA suggested during my Climate Reality training. I had the barebone idea but had not termed it co-op. Her suggestion was brilliant. She said she thinks that is the only way to make it work.
So, I am applying what I have learned to the Discernible Spectrum. It is a slow process.
References:
1. Ryu, J., & Park, S. (2022). A branch-and-price algorithm for the robust single-source capacitated facility location problem under demand uncertainty. EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, 11, 100069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejtl.2021.100069
2. Harding, Chris. (2024). Facilities Location Problem With MATLAB. Discernible Spectrum. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/facilities-location-problem-matlab-chris-harding-3eb8e/
3. Harding, Chris. (2024). Minimizing the Sum of Facility Activation Costs and Transportation Costs at Specified Demands. Discernible Spectrum. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/minimizing-sum-facility-activation-costs-specified-demands-harding-fy0ac/