MODELING OF U.S. CORN ETHANOL INDUSTRIAL GROWTH

Published

April 13, 2011

Author(s)

Deogratias Kibira, Guodong Shao, Stephen Nowak

Abstract

The production capacity of corn ethanol as a transportation fuel is experiencing rapid growth in the United States. The demand is driven by increased prices of gasoline, government mandates, incentives, desire for cleaner fuels, and the need to achieve energy independence. Continued strong growth of the corn ethanol industry will depend on profitability by both suppliers and producers. This in turn will be influenced by several factors such as demand, government incentives, feedstock availability and prices, processing plant capacity, and efficient farm and ethanol processing technologies. How and to what extent will the projected growth of the corn ethanol industry in the United States be influenced by some or all of these factors? We use system dynamics modeling to construct the causal-loop structure of the corn ethanol industry and a stock and flow diagrams to explore how changes in projected factors and growth indicators will affect the industry. Currently, planners and researchers explore various energy supply options by the year 2030, when world energy usage is expected to increase by about 50% over that of 2009. Using system dynamics modeling, this paper explores different possible growth scenarios of the industry for the next twenty years.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the ASME 2011 5th International Conference on Energy Sustainability & 9th Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology Conference ESFuelCell2011

Conference Dates

August 7-10, 2011

Conference Location

Washington, DC

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Renewable energy, Energy independence, Corn ethanol production, System dynamics modeling

Citation

Kibira, D. , Shao, G. and Nowak, S. (2011), MODELING OF U.S. CORN ETHANOL INDUSTRIAL GROWTH, Proceedings of the ASME 2011 5th International Conference on Energy Sustainability & 9th Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology Conference ESFuelCell2011, Washington, DC, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=908307 (Accessed April 20, 2024)