An Opinion Poll for the Establishment of a Bioethanol Plant Utilizing Local Resources and a Fuzzy Inference System: An Advance Study

Abstract

Sweet sorghum (sorghum bicolor) cultivation is currently one of the most promising energy crops for bioethanol production. An opinion poll was held for the establishment of a bioethanol plant using local resources such as sweet sorghum cultivation and zeolite deposits. Data were gathered by the heads of selected Trigono Municipality households (Evros, Greece). Simple random sampling was used, and face-to-face interviews and questionnaire filling were performed. It was projected that 44,778-55,971 acres of land should be planted with sweet sorghum to produce enough bioethanol in a bioethanol plant capable of producing 120,000-150,000 tonnes per year. Furthermore, using the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox of Matlab (Intelligent system), an optimal solution was estimated in this paper, which is formulated as follows: “the bioethanol plant absorbing the sweet sorghum output of a cultivating area of 46,600 acres and operating 12 hours/day will generate 125,000 tonnes of bioethanol annually.”