Assessing the Contribution of Residual Biomass Transformation to the Circular Economy: Warehouse Location for Supplying Processing Sites to Generate Energy and Chemicals

Circular Economy (CE) aims to redress the negative impacts on the environment of linear economic models. Most CE research focusses primarily on materials flows in a stationary state. This paper’s aim is to provide a dynamic approach to CE on the regional level through the transformation of residual biomass to energy, using data from monthly crop production in Mexico. The data was analysed on a three-step approach: (1) Through time to obtain the biomass availability; (2) The selection of processing sites s based on geographical location; and (3) The processing capacity, which was calculated through a quasi-steady state on the warehouses. in the different locations. The residual biomass used ranged between 1.9 × 106 Mg/year to 11.5 Mg/year. The cumulative residual biomass used is 12.1 × 106 Mg/year with a total raw material cost of 386 × 106 US $/year. The results show that there is variability of the residual biomass availability throughout the year. The combination of residual biomass from different crops provides a higher throughput on the processing site, especially with yearly variations. The results show that the transformation to liquids is more profitable when processing 200,000 Mg/year or more, otherwise it is more profitable to transform it to electricity. The results of this research model a systematic and quantitative method for using agricultural residual biomass to generate energy or chemicals. This transformation must consider four approaches: (1) the yearly fluctuations of the crops; (2) economic issues; (3) biomass availability; and (4) biomass processing sites’ location. Residual biomass transformation to energy has a great possibility to contribute to CE on the regional level.