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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Sustainable Production and Consumption

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/spc

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A multi-period sourcesink mixed integer linear

programming model for biochar-based carbon sequestration
systems
Raymond R. Tan
Chemical Engineering Department, De La Salle University, 2401 Taft Avenue, 0922 Manila, Philippines

A B S T R A C T

Biochar-based systems are a potentially effective means of large-scale carbon sequestration. Such systems rely on
carbonization of biomass into biochar, which can then be added to soil for the dual purpose of sequestering carbon
and improving fertility. When properly deployed, these systems can potentially achieve negative emissions through
the net transfer of carbon from the atmosphere into the ground. In this work, an optimization model is developed
to determine the allocation of biochar streams of different quality levels to various biochar sinks, which are farms
whose tolerance to impurities present in biochar are known a priori. The optimization model determines sourcesink
allocation of biochar so as to minimize total system carbon footprint, while ensuring that soil quality parameters
for each sink are not exceeded. An illustrative case study is solved to demonstrate the use of the model.
Keywords: Biochar; Negative emissions technology; Carbon sequestration; Optimization; Mixed integer linear
programming; Sourcesink model
c 2016 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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1.

Introduction

Negative emission technologies (NETs) may become necessary in order to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2 )
levels to safe levels during the course of the 21st Century.
Examples of NET options include direct air capture (DAC),
augmented ocean disposal (i.e., ocean liming or fertilization), bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage (BECCS), and
biochar application to soil (McLaren, 2012; McGlashan et al.,
2012). The latter option has traditionally been used as a soil
amendment strategy, but is now recognized as a potentially
important agro-industrial strategy for climate change mitigation, because it results in the net transfer of carbon from the
atmosphere into the ground (Lehmann et al., 2011). This benefit results from three main steps: the net transfer of carbon from atmospheric CO2 into biomass (via photosynthesis),
from biomass into biochar (via thermochemical conversion)

and from free biochar into soil carbon (via soil amendment).
The pyrolysis of biomass yields gas (syngas), liquid (bio-oil)
and solid fractions (biochar) in varying proportions, depending on feedstock characteristics and processing conditions.
The biochar that is formed is a carbon-rich solid which is
in turn comprised of labile (degradable) and recalcitrant (unreactive) fractions. When biochar is applied to soil, the recalcitrant fraction decomposes very slowly, typically with a
half-life measured on the time scale of a few centuries;
thus, application of biochar can potentially result in semipermanent sequestration of carbon, which can prove useful
for achieving medium-term reductions in CO2 levels in the
coming decades (Lehmann et al., 2011). Furthermore, biochar
can improve the quality of soil, thus improving crop yields
or reducing the need for fertilizers. It has further been argued by biochar proponents that additional climatic benefits can be achieved from reduced fertilizer demand, reduced

Fax: +63 2 536 4226..

E-mail address: Raymond.Tan@dlsu.edu.ph.
Received 29 March 2016; Received in revised form 5 August 2016; Accepted 8 August 2016.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2016.08.001
c 2016 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
2352-5509/

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Nomenclature
Sets
I
J
K
P

Biochar sources
Biochar sinks
Biochar contaminants
Time periods

Indexes
i
j
k
p

Biochar source index (i = 1, 2, 3 . . . M)

Biochar sink index (j = 1, 2, 3 . . . N)
Biochar contaminant index (k = 1, 2, 3 . . . Q)
Time period index (p = 1, 2, 3 . . . T)

Parameters
Ai

Qjk

Sequestration factor of biochar from source

i (tCO2 /t)
Transportation emissions factor for biochar
from source i to sink j (tCO2 /t)
Limiting biochar application rate at sink j in
period p (t/y)
Limiting biochar storage capacity of sink j (t)
Limit to the number of sources linked to any
given sink
Concentration of contaminant k in biochar
produced by source i in period p (ppm or g/t)
Concentration limit of contaminant k in

SLip

biochar used in sink j (ppm or g/t)

Lower limit of biochar production rate of source

SU
ip

i in period p (t/y)
Upper limit of biochar production rate of source

i in period p (t/y)
Duration of planning horizon (y)

Bij
Djp
Lj
N
Qikp

Variables
bi
bij
sip
xijp

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2
3
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6
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9
10
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13
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Binary variable for sink i

Binary variable for biochar allocated from
source i to sink j
Biochar production rate of source i in period p
(t/y)
Amount of biochar allocated from source i to
sink j in period p (t/y)

methane (CH4 ) and nitrous oxide (N2 O) emissions from soil,

and avoided emissions (from offsets of fossil fuel combustion and biomass decomposition). The maximum sustainable technical potential (MSTP) of emissions reduction with
biochar has been estimated at 130 Gt CO2 C equivalent until
the end of the century (Woolf et al., 2010), with roughly 60%
of this total being attributable to direct sequestration of carbon in the biochar itself. McLaren (2012) estimates the emissions reduction potential of biochar at 0.93.0 Gt CO2 /y, at
a cost of US$8300/t CO2 . It is notable that biochar is a lowtechnology measure that can be more easily deployed in the
developing world than alternative NETs (McGlashan et al.,
2012), although further research is needed to optimize carbon sequestration benefits. It has recently been suggested
that biochar production can be used as a sustainable strategy for managing invasive plant species (Guerena et al., 2015).
Biochar was rated by McLaren (2012) as being intermediate in

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terms of technological readiness level (TRL), with large-scale

deployment being at least a decade away; part of the uncertainty lies in case-specific limiting factors, such as supply of
biomass feedstock for biochar production and suitability of
soil for biochar application. Economic barriers to commercial use have also been pointed out (Vochozka et al., 2015).
Many current developments are documented in the website of International Biochar Initiative (0000) (www.biocharinternational.org).
Biochar critics point out that there are still conflicting
results in the scientific literature (Kuppusamy et al., 2016),
suggesting that the potential to achieve the co-benefits
claimed above is highly dependent on site-specific or projectspecific details. Potential disadvantages of biochar application
include albedo effects due to soil darkening, excessive pH
elevation, as well as adverse effects on soil quality due
to the introduction of contaminants such as salts, heavy
metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins.
While laboratory assays can be used to determine impurity
levels in biochar (Amin et al., 2016), it is more challenging
to accurately determine the tolerable safe levels of such
impurities in the soil to which biochar is added. These
risks suggest that careful planning will be necessary to
match biochar sources (pyrolysis plants and the associated
feedstocks) with biochar sinks (farms and the associated local
soil conditions) in order to minimize the potential for adverse
unintended consequences. Based on the current state of
knowledge, it remains uncertain whether biochar will prove
to be a scalable, cost-effective technological option to mitigate
climate change. However, in the event that it does, there
will clearly be a need for decision support tools to guide the
implementation of commercial biochar-based projects on a
globally significant scale.
The area of process systems engineering (PSE) has evolved
over the decades to cover novel applications outside of
the traditional scope of synthesis and design problems in
chemical engineering, such as supply chain planning and
enterprise-wide optimization (Stephanopoulos and Reklaitis,
2011). There has been significant recent interest in the
use of PSE tools for the design of sustainable biomassbased facilities such as biorefineries and polygeneration
plants (e.g., Martin and Grossmann, 2015). Similarly, the
allied sub-discipline of process integration (PI) has also
diversified from the original focus of process heat recovery
and energy efficiency enhancement, to a broad range of
structurally analogous problems that can be dealt with
using pinch analysis, mathematical programming, or allied
methodologies such as process graphs (Kleme et al., 2013).
These historical trends suggest that quantitative tools can be
developed to aid in the planning of commercial-scale biochar
systems. Examples to date include life cycle assessment (LCA)
of biochar systems (Roberts et al., 2010), modeling of coproduction of biochar and bioenergy (Field et al., 2013) and
optimal synthesis of polygeneration plants with biochar as a
major co-product (Ubando et al., 2014).
In this work, a novel multi-period sourcesink mixed
integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed for the
allocation of biochar for carbon sequestration. The proposed
model draws on features from structurally analogous models
developed previously for bioenergy supply networks (Foo
et al., 2013) and CO2 capture and storage (CCS) networks
(Tan et al., 2013); these models in turn fall under a general
class of sourcesink models used extensively in PI literature
(Foo and Tan, in press). Such models are similar to wellknown transportation models in operational research (OR)

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Q3

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sequestration during the entire time horizon covered by the

model:
i j p Ai xijp i j p Bij xijp

maximize

Fig. 1 Sourcesink superstructure for biochar network.

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literature, augmented with stream quality constraints.

The framework is proposed here as a decision-support
tool to facilitate high-level planning of biochar sourcesink
networks. The model captures generic features of large-scale
biochar-based sequestration systems as currently envisioned
in the literature. However, its formulation is also sufficiently
flexible so as to allow case-specific operational details to be
incorporated through the introduction of additional features
(i.e., variables, parameters and constraints) as the state of
knowledge evolves. The proposed formulation can thus serve
as the core for the development of more complex models in
the future. The rest of this note is organized as follows. First,
a formal problem statement is given. Next, the optimization
model formulation is described. A hypothetical illustrative
case study is then solved as proof of concept in order to
demonstrate the models functionality. Finally, conclusions
and prospects for future work are given.

2.

Formal problem statement

The problem to be addressed can be represented schematically as in Fig. 1, and may be formally stated as follows: Given
a set of biochar sources i I (biomass processing facilities,
i = 1, 2, 3 . . . M) to be allocated to a set of biochar sinks j
J (farms or other tracts of land, j = 1, 2, 3 . . . N) during the
course of a planning horizon comprised of time intervals p P
(one-year periods, p = 1, 2, 3 . . . T); given that, for each biochar
source i, the annual flowrate limits and levels of impurities
k K (contaminants, k = 1, 2, 3 . . . Q) are known; given that, for
each biochar sink j, the maximum annual flowrate, maximum
total storage capacity and maximum allowable level of each
impurity k are known; given that, for each potential match
between source i and sink j, the carbon footprint associated
with the handling and transportation of each unit of biochar
is known; the objective of the model is to determine the optimum allocation of biochar from each sink i to each sink j in
each time period k, in order to maximize the system-wide net
CO2 sequestration.

3.

Mathematical model formulation

The MILP model formulation is described here. The

objective function is to maximize the total cumulative CO2

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(1)

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where Ai is the sequestration factor of biochar from source

i (typically expressed in t CO2 /t), Bij is the transportation
and handling penalty for biochar from source i to sink j (also
in t CO2 /t), and xijp is the amount of biochar (expressed in
t/y) allocated from source i to sink j in period p. Parameter
Ai gives the amount of CO2 sequestered per unit mass of
biochar, and is a function of the fraction of recalcitrant carbon
in the biochar as well as upstream operational emissions; in
principle, this parameter can be redefined to also quantify
synergistic effects resulting from modification of CH4 and
N2 O flows from soil, which can likewise be expressed in terms
of CO2 equivalents. The coefficient Bij gives CO2 emissions
per unit mass of biochar allocated to a given sourcesink
pair, and is dependent on distance between a source and a
sink, as well as the mode of transport. Handling and tillage
emissions at the biochar application site are also assumed
here to be subsumed within Bij (whose magnitude is typically
very small compared to Ai ), but may be separated in the future
if necessary. Next, the source balance is given by:

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i, p

j xijp = sip

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(2)

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where sip is the total biochar production from source i in

period p (expressed in t/y). This quantity is in turn subject
to upper and lower limits:
bi SLip sip bi SU
ip

i, p

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(3)

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(4)

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where bi is a binary variable signifying the existence or nonexistence of source i at any time within the planning horizon,
are the lower and upper limits, respectively,
and SLip and SU
ip

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bi {0, 1}

of biochar production rate from source i. Variable bi assumed

becomes zero if a value of sip that falls within the bounds
cannot be found. The values of the lower and upper limits
can be exogenously specified to reflect unique operating
conditions (e.g., minimum economically viable production
rate, or maximum feasible production rate based on biomass
availability). Also, their values can be set to zero for periods
in which the source does not exist or operate. Then, biochar
balances at the sinks are governed by:

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Q4

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j, p

(5)

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(6)

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(7)

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where Djp is the limiting biochar application rate from sink

j in period p (expressed in t/y), Lj is the total biochar
storage capacity of sink j (in t), Qikp is the concentration of
contaminant k in biochar produced by source i in period p,
Qjk is the maximum tolerable level of contaminant k in the

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i xijp Djp
i p xijp Lj

i xijp Qikp Djp Qjk j, k, p

biochar to be applied to the soil in sink j (contaminant levels

are expressed in appropriate units, such as ppm or g/t), and
is a dimensionless risk aversion parameter in the interval
[0, 1]. In practice, Lj may be determined from factors such as
land area, topsoil depth and limiting biocharsoil blending
rate. Also, there may be special cases where the values of
Djp and Qikp remain the same throughout all periods p. For
example, the biochar annual application rate limit may just
be a uniform allocation of total storage capacity over the
total planning horizon of duration T, such that Djp = Lj /T.
In the case of the biochar quality, it may be assumed that

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Table 1 Biochar source data for the case study.

Source
1
2
3

Minimum
production rate (t/y)

Maximum
production rate (t/y)

1500
1000
2500

2000
1200
3000

Sequestration
factor (t CO2 /t)

Biochar quality
(mg PAH/kg)

2.2
2.0
2.5

Years of
operation

10
2
1

110
110
310

Table 2 Biochar sink data for the case study.

Sink

Area (ha)

1
2
3
4

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

200
500
400
1000

Application
dosage (t/ha)
50
20
25
30

Storage capacity (t)

10,000
10,000
10,000
30,000

each source, given fairly uniform biomass feedstock during its

operating life, and without significant process retrofits, gives
a consistent contaminant level in its product, such that Qik1 =
Qik2 . . . = QikT . Parameter is used in the model to quantify
the extent to which the decision-maker is willing to risk soil
contamination; its value is zero for a completely risk averse
decision-maker (i.e., if no level of soil contamination can be
tolerated), and unity for a risk-taking decision-maker who
is willing to let soil contaminant levels reach the prescribed
physical limit. Finally, limits are imposed on all flowrates
between sourcesink pairs:

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0 xijp bij SU
ip

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bij {0, 1}

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where bij is a binary variable signifying the existence or

non-existence of a stream of biochar from source i to sink
j. As with other applications in PI literature, the presence
of these binary variables allows case-specific constraints
on network topology to be added to the model (Poplewski
et al., 2010). Examples of such constraints include limits on
network complexity, specification of forbidden sourcesink
combinations, etc., and in many cases such considerations
can be formulated as additional linear constraints. The
given objective function and constraints constitute an MILP
model. Solution of such models for problems of practical size
generally presents no significant computational challenges
using branch-and-bound solvers embedded in currently
available commercial software (including solvers embedded
in common spreadsheet applications such as Microsoft Excel).
The use of this MILP model as a planning tool is illustrated in
the next section.

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i, j, p

i, j

(8)
(9)

1000
1000
1000
3000

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4.

Illustrative case study

This section uses a hypothetical case study with three

sources, four sinks, one contaminant and a 10-year time
horizon as a didactic example to illustrate the use of the
model. Although the scenario described is fictitious, the
features of the case study use plausible assumptions based
on the current state of the biochar literature. The size of
the problem is also deliberately kept small to allow for
transparent inspection of the optimization results. In this
case, the biochar contaminant of interest is PAH, which can
form during thermal processing of biomass. The presence
of PAH is a critical issue in biochar systems due potential
adverse health effects resulting from crop contamination

Limiting biochar
quality (mg PAH/kg)
25
10
5
2

Table 3 Transportation distances in km for sourcesink

pairs in the case study.
Source

Sink
2

1
1
2
3

70
80
100

60
60
80

3
50
40
80

4
120
50
40

(Kuppusamy et al., 2016). Table 1 shows the source data for the
three biochar plants; note that Sources 1 and 2 are operational
throughout the entire 10-year planning horizon, while Source
3 only begins to operate in the third year. The characteristics
of the sinks are given in Table 2. The storage capacity of each
farm or tract of land is based on the amount of biochar that
can be added until the soil is saturated; it is further assumed
that the annual limit to the rate of biochar application is just
one-tenth of the storage limit, based on the specified 10-year
time horizon. The final column of Table 2 gives the maximum
level of PAH in biochar that can be safely added to the soil
(note that 1 mg/kg = 1 g/t); in practice, this limit is based on
background levels of PAH already present at the site, as well as
the characteristics of the crop to be cultivated at the farm. The
distances between the biochar sources and sinks are given in
Table 3. It is assumed that the carbon footprint of transporting
biochar by truck is 0.1 kg CO2 /t/km (Foo et al., 2013). The
MILP model corresponding to this problem was implemented
using the commercial optimization software LINGO 13.0 and
solved with negligible CPU time using a laptop with 8.00 GB
RAM, i7-3540MCPU and a 64-bit operating system running on
Windows 8 Pro.

4.1.
31

Limiting biochar
flowrate (t/y)

Baseline scenario

The risk aversion parameter is set to a value of 1 for the

baseline scenario. The resulting optimal allocation of biochar
is given in Table 4. Each cell has two values; the first number
gives the biochar allocation in the first two years of operation,
while the second number gives the allocation from the third
to the tenth years. In the first two years, it can be seen that the
model recommends blending of biochar to ensure that PAH
limit at Sink 3 is met; it can easily be verified from simple
material balance computations that 375 t/y of biochar from
Source 1 (with PAH level of 10 mg/kg) mixed with 625 t/y of
biochar from Source 2 (with PAH level of 2 mg/kg) results in a
stream of 1000 t/y with PAH level of 5 mg/kg. The effective rate
of CO2 sequestration during the first two years is 6782.4 t/y;

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Table 4 Optimal sourcesink network for the baseline scenario of the case study (biochar
flowrates in t/y).
Source

Sink
1

1
2
3

625; 1000

1000; 1000

Total

625; 1000

1000; 1000

Total
3

375; 0
625; 1000

4
2000; 2000
1200; 1000
0; 3000

575; 0
0; 3000

1000; 1000

575; 3000

Table 5 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.8 (biochar flowrates in t/y).

Source

Sink
1

1
2
3

950; 1000

Total

950; 1000

Total
3

800; 750
0; 250

250; 250
750; 750

800; 1000

1000; 1000

4
2000; 2000
1200; 1000
0; 3000

450; 0
0; 3000
450; 3000

Table 6 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.6 (biochar flowrates in t/y).

Source

Sink
1

1000; 1000

600; 528
0; 325
0; 67

300; 125
0; 875

100; 67
1200; 0
0; 2933

Total

1000; 1000

600; 920

300; 1000

1300; 3000

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this net value results from 6800 t/y of CO2 sequestration

via direct biochar application, minus a small penalty of
17.6 t/y of emissions from transportation. Commencement of
operation of Source 3 from the third year onward results in a
modified allocation for the remainder of the 10-year planning
horizon, as indicated by the second set of numbers in each
cell of Table 4. In this case, the allocation network is much
simpler and requires no more biochar blending. During the
final eight years of operation of the biochar system, the net
sequestration rate is 13,871 t/y, which results from 13,900 t/y
of sequestration from biochar, minus 29 t/y of emissions
from biochar transport (see Fig. 2). Thus, during the 10-year
period of operation, the net CO2 sequestration achieved by
the system is 124,532 t, which consists of the biochar CO2
sequestration of 124,800 t (6800 t/y 2 y + 13, 900 8 y)
minus the total transportation penalty 268 t (17.6 t/y 2
y + 29 t/y 8 y).

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4.2.

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20

1
2
3

Fig. 2 Sensitivity of optimal solution to parameter .

1

Total
3

Sensitivity analysis with respect to

Although the quality of biochar can be easily determined via

laboratory tests (Amin et al., 2016), in practice it is more dif-

2000; 2000
1200; 1200
0; 3000

ficult to determine the level of impurity that can be tolerated by the receiving soil. The risk aversion parameter is
included in the model to account for this uncertainty. Sensitivity analysis is performed here to determine the tradeoff between CO2 sequestration benefit and soil contamination risk
in biochar systems. The MILP is solved repeatedly for = 0.9,
0.8. . . 0.2 and 0.1, to determine the extent of sequestration
benefits that can be achieved for an increasingly risk averse
decision-maker (note that it is not necessary to solve the case
of = 0, for which no biochar application is possible at all).
Fig. 2 shows the tradeoff between these two conflicting considerations for the biochar system. It is notable that, even at
= 0.5, the optimal CO2 sequestration level is 118,285 t; this
result means that it is possible to reduce soil contaminant
loading to half of the limiting values in Table 3, with a corresponding reduction in CO2 sequestration of just 5% relative
to the baseline level determined in the previous subsection.
However, the magnitude of CO2 sequestration declines more
rapidly as is reduced further below a value of 0.5. Selected
networks corresponding to = 0.8, 0.6, 0.4 and 0.2 are shown
in Tables 58, respectively. It is notable that the production of
low-quality biochar from Source 1 is reduced at a conservative
value of = 0.4, and is eliminated entirely for = 0.2.

4.3.

Network simplification

The integer variables in the MILP models can be used

to impose additional user-specified constraints on network
topology (Poplewski et al., 2010). For example, this point is
illustrated here using the network determined previously for
= 0.6, which is shown in Table 6. It can be seen that
the optimal network requires a total of eight sourcesink
matches from the third year of operations onward, and that
Sink 2 in particular receives biochar from all three biochar
sources. This configuration is able to sequester 122,799 t
of CO2 through the duration of the planning horizon. The

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Table 7 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.4 (biochar flowrates in t/y).

Source

Sink
1

1
2
3

1000; 1000

Total

1000; 1000

Total

400; 340

200; 200

0; 600
400; 940

200; 200

4
240; 0

1840; 1540

0; 2400

0; 3000

240; 2400

Table 8 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.2 (biochar flowrates in t/y).

Source

Sink
1

Total
3

1
2
3

0; 1000

100; 200
0; 800

500; 0
0; 1000

600; 0
0; 1200

Total

0; 1000

100; 1000

500; 1000

600; 1200

1200; 1200
0; 3000

Table 9 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.6 and N = 2 (biochar flowrates in t/y).
Source

Sink
1

1
2
3

1000; 1000

Total

1000; 1000

Total
3

600; 500
0; 500

300; 222

600; 1000

1900; 1722
1200; 1189
0; 3000

0; 778

1200; 689
0; 2222

300; 1000

1200; 2911

Table 10 Optimal sourcesink network for = 0.6 and N = 1 (biochar flowrates in t/y).
Source

Sink
1

1
2

1
2
3

1000; 1000

Total

1000; 1000

1000; 1000
0; 3000
600; 600

1000; 1000

network topology may be simplified by adding the following

constraint:
i bij N j

where N is the limit to the number of biochar sources that are

allowed to be linked to any given sink. Solving the model for
N = 2 gives the network shown in Table 9, for which the CO2
sequestration is 122,196 t. Note that the resulting network
simplification reduces the extent of carbon sequestration by
a mere fraction of 1%. On the other hand, using N = 1
gives the drastically simplified network shown in Table 10;
this solution sequesters 114,958 t of CO2 , which represents a
reduction of about 6% relative to the unrestricted network in
Table 6.

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5.

600; 600

Total
3

(10)

1600; 1600
1000; 1000
0; 3000

0; 3000

contamination tradeoff to be calibrated, while the inclusion

of integer variables allows network topology to be controlled
on a case-to-case basis. The MILP model proposed here can
thus serve as a high-level planning tool to determine the
benefits that potentially accrue from a large scale, biocharbased carbon sequestration project. Future work can focus on
detailed operational extensions of this basic framework, using the model developed here as the core to which new features (i.e., parameters, variables and constraints) are added;
multiple-objective extensions can also be developed to incorporate economic aspects (Vochozka et al., 2016) as well as various supply chain sustainability metrics used in the literature
(Ahi et al., 2016). Alternative modes of long-term biochar storage other than direct soil amendment can also be explored.
Furthermore, the model should eventually be tested on pilotscale biochar demonstration projects.

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Conclusions

An MILP model for the allocation of biochar to different land

sinks has been developed in this work. The optimization
model uses a multi-period sourcesink formulation to enable biochar streams of varying quality to be distributed and
mixed, such that system-wide CO2 emissions are minimized;
the model simultaneously ensures that biochar impurity levels do not exceed the tolerances of the different tracts of land
that are used as carbon sinks. The model also incorporates a
risk aversion parameter to allow CO2 sequestration and soil

Acknowledgments
The financial support of the Philippine Commission on
Higher Education (CHED) via the Philippine Higher Education Research Network (PHERNet) Sustainability Studies
Program, under the project entitled Development of Process Systems Engineering (PSE) Approaches to the Design
and Operation of Low-Carbon Energy System, is gratefully
acknowledged.

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