Florent Duval, a postgraduate student from Imperial College, London, currently studying a Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Futures, will present the Statistical Sciences seminar, entitled, "Bioenergy and Sugarcane SupplyChain: An optimisation model".  

Biomass has always been a central source of energy, but in an unhealthy, inefficient and polluting way. Turning this source of energy into a clean and healthy one focuses the attention of current bioenergy projects and sugarcane is one of the most interesting feedstock, as it would develop a bioenergy supply chain relying on a well-established, international sugar industry, and as it could be used to produce energy in a sustainable way. Optimization of the sugarcane supply chain is crucial in order to address the environmental and energy issues while preserving the sugar industry and food crops. It also needs to take into account all the different stakeholders and their various interests. The Center for Process Systems Engineering in Imperial College is currently developing a model for the optimization of the supply chain. The proposed approach to reach these optimization objectives is a combination of a multi-integer linear programming (MILP) optimization, based on costs and emission reductions, with an agent-based modeling. The ABM generates inputs for the optimization of the sugar mills production, taking into account the behaviors of different stakeholders and the dynamic of the populations in South Africa.  This seminar will present the work achieved on this project by Florent Delval, postgraduate student at Imperial College (MSc Sustainable Energy Futures). He will present the chosen methodology and the results he obtained from developing this combined ABM and optimization modeling.

Florent Delval is a postgraduate student from Imperial College London, currently studying in the Master of Sciences “Sustainable Energy Futures”, focused on renewable energy technologies, policies, management and innovation. Prior to Imperial College, Florent was a student of École Polytechnique, one of the best French Schools of Engineering, including a core training centered on high level abstract and applied mathematics and physics. During his engineering studies at École Polytechnique, Florent has specialised in environmental engineering and renewable energies, by studying both technical energy-related topics along with physics and mechanics applied to Earth and climate. Besides his academic training, Florent has acquired work experiences closely related to the energy field, among other by realising an internship in the hydropower department of EDF, French leading electricity company, and conducting a research project on organic photovoltaic solar cells in the team of Jenny Nelson (Imperial College). Florent is working at the moment on the final thesis for his MSc at Imperial College, with a project aimed at modelling and optimising the supply chain for bioenergy from sugarcane in South Africa.