Industrial straw utilization in China: Simulation and analysis of the dynamics of technology application and competition

Qiang Li, Dingjiang Chen, Bing Zhu and Shanying Hu

Technology in Society, 2012, vol. 34, issue 3, 207-215

Abstract: Many regions of China have abundant straw resources for industrial utilization. Although there has been an emerging trend of using straw resources for bioenergy in China, there is little study of the dynamics of straw utilization in industry. This study develops an agent-based model to simulate the dynamics of industrial utilization of redundant straw in a virtual area of 10,000 square kilometers. The dynamics of three typical industrial straw utilization technologies applied in enterprise are simulated: bioethanol, power generation, and paper making. Four scenarios are established to compare changes in the total scale and proportion of enterprise caused by collection technologies and subsidy to bioethanol. The results show that the final industrial consumption of straw is approximately 60% in the basic scenario, whereas the highest proportion is almost 90% in the other scenarios. The largest share of straw is consumed by power generation in scenarios with low bioethanol subsidies and is close to bioethanol in scenarios with high bioethanol subsidies. The industrial structure varies due to changes in collection technologies and bioethanol subsidies in the scenario analysis. The industrialization of bioethanol is also determined by technological maturity time. Some policy implications to improve industrial straw utilization are discussed based on the results.

Keywords: Straw; Technology; Dynamics; Agent-based model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X12000395
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:34:y:2012:i:3:p:207-215

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2012.05.001

Access Statistics for this article

Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown

More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().