A Non-Probabilistic Solution for Uncertainty and Sensitivity Analysis on Techno-Economic Assessments of Biodiesel Production with Interval Uncertainties

Abstract

Techno-economic assessments (TEA) of biodiesel production may comply with various economic and technical uncertainties during the lifespan of the project, resulting in the variation of many parameters associated with biodiesel production, including price of biodiesel, feedstock price, and rate of interest. Engineers may only collect very limited information on these uncertain parameters such as their variation intervals with lower and upper bound. This paper proposes a novel non-probabilistic strategy for uncertainty analysis (UA) in the TEA of biodiesel production with interval parameters, and non-probabilistic reliability index (NPRI) is employed to measure the economically feasible extent of biodiesel production. A sensitivity analysis (SA) indicator is proposed to assess the sensitivity of NPRI with regard to an individual uncertain interval parameter. The optimization method is utilized to solve NPRI and SA. Results show that NPRI in the focused biodiesel production of interest is 0.1211, and price of biodiesel, price of feedstock, and cost of operating can considerably affect TEA of biodiesel production.