Methodology for optimizing biomass utilization for sustainable heat generation in chili dehydration plants: A case study in Zacatecas, Mexico

This study presents a spatially integrated techno-economic methodology for replacing fossil fuels with residual biomass in agro-industrial heat generation, using chili dehydration plants in Zacatecas, Mexico, as a case study. The approach combines Geographic Information Systems (GIS), biomass resource assessment, transport network optimization, and energy system analysis to determine the technical, economic, and environmental feasibility of biomass-based heat supply. Forty-three dehydration plants comprising 504 drying tunnels were geolocated, and their thermal energy demands quantified, resulting in an annual biomass requirement of 44,899 t of dry woodchips. A GIS-based inventory identified 186 biomass collection points, mainly concentrated in the state’s western forested areas. Spatial buffer and route-network analyses revealed that 46,023 tons of residual biomass per year are available within a 150 km service radius, sufficient to supply the entire network. A transport routing algorithm based on a distance-priority greedy heuristic was developed and benchmarked against the exact linear programming (LP) solution for the underlying capacitated transportation problem (186 origins, 43 destinations, 7,998 candidate routes), achieving an optimality gap of 1.79 %. The resulting logistics system has a total transportation cost of USD 839,335 per year and a total delivered biomass cost of approximately USD 1.89 million per year. The technical analysis indicates that replacing the existing fuel‑oil‑based boilers with biomass boilers and the existing LPG burners with biomass burners can reliably meet the plants’ thermal demand. From an environmental perspective, the transition to biomass would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions (CO 2 e) by 81.3 % relative to the baseline of 35,050 t CO 2 /year, depending on the extent of seasonal biomass substitution. The results indicate the potential of residual biomass to provide a cost-effective, low-carbon heat source for chili dehydration in Zacatecas, highlighting the value of GIS-based planning and optimized logistics for regional bioenergy deployment.