Feedstock Logistics

Rigorous economic analyses are crucial for the successful launch of lignocellulosic bioenergy facilities in 2014 and beyond. Our objectives are to (1) introduce readers to a query tool developed to use data downloaded from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) REAPnet for constructing enterprise budgets and (2) demonstrate the use of the query tool with REAPnet data from two field research sites (Ames, IA, and Mandan, ND) for evaluating short-term economic performance of various biofuel feedstock production strategies. Our results for both sites showed that short-term (<3 years) impacts on grain profitability were lower at lower average annual crop residue removal rates. However, it will be important to monitor longer term changes to see if grain profitability declines over time and if biomass harvest degrades soil resources. Analyses for Iowa showed short-term breakeven field-edge biomass prices of $26–$42 Mg−1 among the most efficient strategies, while results for North Dakota showed breakeven prices of $54–$73 Mg−1. We suggest that development of the data query tool is important because it helps illustrate several different soil and crop management strategies that could be used to provide sustainable feedstock supplies.

This paper was presented at the 2012 International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software in Leipzig, Germany on July 15, 2012.

Abstract: Agricultural residues are the largest near term source of cellulosic biomass for bioenergy production, but removing agricultural residues sustainably requires considering the critical roles that residues play in the agronomic system. Determination of sustainable removal rates for agricultural residues has received significant attention and integrated modeling strategies have been built to evaluate sustainable removal rates considering soil erosion and organic matter constraints. However, the current integrated model, comprised of the agronomic models WEPS, RUSLE2, and SCI, does not quantitatively assess the impacts of residue removal on soil organic carbon and long term crop yields. Furthermore, it does not evaluate the impact of residue removal on greenhouse gas emissions, specifically N2O and CO2 gas fluxes from the soil surface. The DAYCENT model simulates several important processes for determining agroecosystem performance. These processes include daily nitrogen gas flux, daily CO2 flux from soil respiration, soil organic carbon and nitrogen, net primary productivity, and daily water and nitrate leaching. Each of these processes is an indicator of sustainability when evaluating emerging cellulosic biomass production systems for bioenergy. This paper couples the DAYCENT model with the existing integrated model to investigate additional environment al impacts of agricultural residue removal. The integrated model is extended to facilitate two - way coupling between DAYC ENT and the existing framework. The extended integrated model, including DAYCENT, is applied to investigate additional environmental impacts from a recent sustainable agricultural residue removal dataset. Results show some differences in sustainable removal rates compared to previous results for a case study county in Iowa , US . The extended integrated model also predict s that long term yields will decrease .32% – 1.43 % under sustainable residue removal management practices.

The 2012 Sun Grant National Conference on Science for Biomass Feedstock Production and Utilization was held on 2–5 October 2012, in New Orleans, LA, USA. The Sun Grant Initiative set out to highlight recent advances in science and technology contributing to the deployment of conventional and advanced biofuels and bioproducts from agricultural and forest systems. The Initiative, with sponsorship from the Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), assembled an agenda focusing on promoting collaboration between academic, industry, non-profit, and government partners. This special issue is comprised of a small sample of conference presentations selected to reflect important research progress and to highlight the range of issues that must be considered as the transition to biomass energy takes hold. The entire collection of presentation material and the complete proceedings of the conference is available for download from the conference website. 

Volume 1 of the proceedings can be accessed here: https://ag.tennessee.edu/sungrant/Documents/2012%20National%20Conferenc…

Volume 2 of the proceedings can be accessed here: https://ag.tennessee.edu/sungrant/Documents/2012%20National%20Conferenc…

In July 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) released a request for information (RFI) to seek input from industry, academia, national laboratories, and other biofuels and bioproducts stakeholders to identify existing capabilities to produce lignocellulosic sugars and lignin for use by the research community. The purpose of this RFI is to develop a comprehensive list of suppliers who are willing and able to produce and sell cellulosic sugar and/or lignin for use by the research community.  

BETO has made this list of RFI responses available on its website, providing a table with the organization, location, feedstock, process, and capacity/quantity. Users can select and open each RFI response to obtain more details and read them in full. 

BETO intends to leave the RFI open indefinitely and will continue to collect and post responses.

For more information or to view the summary of RFI responses, visit http://energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/cellulosic-sugar-and-lignin-production-capabilities-rfi-responses.

The Biomass Energy Data Book is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the Biomass Program in the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program of the Department of Energy (DOE). Designed for use as a convenient reference, the book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize the biomass industry, from the production of biomass feedstocks to their end use, including discussions on sustainability.

This is the fourth edition of the Biomass Energy Data Book which is only available online in electronic format. There are five main sections to this book. The first section is an introduction which provides an overview of biomass resources and consumption. Following the introduction to biomass, is a section on biofuels which covers ethanol, biodiesel and bio-oil. The biopower section focuses on the use of biomass for electrical power generation and heating. The fourth section is on the developing area of biorefineries, and the fifth section covers feedstocks that are produced and used in the biomass industry. The sources used represent the latest available data. There are also four appendices which include frequently needed conversion factors, a table of selected biomass feedstock characteristics, and discussions on sustainability. A glossary of terms and a list of acronyms are also included for the reader's convenience.

This 2016 Multi-Year Program Plan (MYPP) sets forth the goals and structure of the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). It identifies the research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities the Office will focus on over the next five years and outlines why these activities are important to meeting the energy and sustainability challenges facing the nation. This MYPP is intended for use as an operational guide to help the Office manage and coordinate its activities, as well as a resource to help communicate its mission and goals to stakeholders and the public.

The Federal Activities Report on the Bioeconomy has been prepared to emphasize the significant potential for an even stronger U.S. bioeconomy through the production and use of biofuels, bioproducts, and biopower. Bioeconomy activities have already touched on the interests of many federal agencies and offices. This report is intended to educate the public on the wide-ranging, federally funded activities that are helping to bolster the bioeconomy. Further, the report will highlight some of the critical work currently being conducted across the federal government that either supports or relates to the bioeconomy.

The federal government as a whole sees great potential in the nation’s abundant natural resources, the capacity for new and advanced technologies, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people. This potential offers the ability to triple the size of today’s bioeconomy by 2030—to over a billion tons of biomass. Through the Biomass Research and Development Board (Board), a new effort is being launched to fully develop this Billion Ton Bioeconomy.

The Board is already working to coordinate research and development federal activities concerning the biobased fuels, products, and power that are key pillars in the bioeconomy. The Board includes members from the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. With leadership across the administration, the Billion Ton Bioeconomy vision could grow the entire bioeconomy supply chain—through feedstock development and production, technology development, conversion, production of renewable chemicals and other biobased products, and marketing and distribution to alternative end use.

Expanding the bioeconomy in a sustainable manner will increase energy diversity and long-term security. It will provide additional economic, environmental, and social benefits, such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions, job growth, and responsible management of diverse sources of biomass and waste materials. Efforts will result in a greener, stronger nation with diverse, new economic sectors that enhance U.S. competitiveness.

Inside the report you will find:

• An overview of the Billion Ton Bioeconomy Vision
• Preliminary analyses of the expected benefits of a Billion Ton Bioeconomy
• A compendium of federal activities that currently support the bioeconomy
• Details on interagency activities that aim to grow the bioeconomy

The Path Forward:

As the United States continues to develop a diverse energy portfolio and transitions to a renewable, clean energy future, the federal government leads the way by working with academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations to provide the science, technology, and policy support to accelerate the deployment of new manufacturing facilities employing innovative processes and using biomass as a feedstock.

Fulfilling this vision will entail aligning the diverse goals, roles, science, technology, data, and tools of many stakeholders across both the public and private sectors for coordinated action that will lead to industrial innovation, increased manufacturing capability, new infrastructure, improvement in agriculture and forest productivity, management and output quality, and green workforce development.

The Board will continue to coordinate and enhance federal efforts—as well as garner collaboration from the government and its stakeholders—in a systematic effort to expand the sustainable production and use of biomass. To further understand the potential of the national bioeconomy, the Board will also be hosting a series of workshops and webinars aimed at gathering input from the public on numerous topics.

Find out more about this exciting new effort by checking out the release on biomassboard.gov.

Conventional feedstock supply systems exist and have been developed for traditional agriculture and forestry systems. These conventional feedstock supply systems can be effective in high biomass-yielding areas (such as for corn stover in Iowa and plantation-grown pine trees in the southern United States), but they have their limits, particularly with respect to addressing feedstock quality and reducing feedstock supply risk to biorefineries. They also are limited in their ability to efficiently deliver energy crops. New logistics technologies and systems are needed to address these challenges and support a growing bioenergy industry.

The proposed solution put forth by the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office to address these challenges is Advanced Feedstock Supply Systems. The Advanced Feedstock Supply Systems incorporate densification, drying, and other preprocessing technologies to create a biomass commodity. A feature of these advanced systems is biomass preprocessing depots that format biomass in fairly close proximity to the location of production. However, validating assumptions used to develop these advanced systems is critical.

The Advanced Feedstock Supply System Validation Workshop gathered experts from industry, DOE offices, DOE-funded laboratories, and academia to discuss approaches to addressing challenges associated with an expanding bioenergy industry and assumptions used in the Advanced Feedstock Supply System. The workshop was sponsored by the DOE Bioenergy Technologies Office.

This paper analyzes the rural Chinese biomass supply system and models supply chain operations according to U.S. concepts of logistical unit operations: harvest and collection, storage, transportation, preprocessing, and handling and queuing. In this paper, we quantify the logistics cost of corn stover and sweet sorghum in China under different scenarios. We analyze three scenarios of corn stover logistics from northeast China and three scenarios of sweet sorghum stalks logistics from Inner Mongolia in China. The case study estimates that the logistics cost of corn stover and sweet sorghum stalk to be $52.95/dry metric ton and $52.64/dry metric ton, respectively, for the current labor-based biomass logistics system. However, if the feedstock logistics operation is mechanized, the cost of corn stover and sweet sorghum stalk decreases to $36.01/dry metric ton and $35.76/dry metric ton, respectively. The study also includes a sensitivity analysis to identify the cost factors that cause logistics cost variation. Results of the sensitivity analysis show that labor price has the most influence on the logistics cost of corn stover and sweet sorghum stalk, with a variation of $6 to $12/dry metric ton.

Pioneer cellulosic biorefineries across the United States rely on a conventional feedstock supply system based on one-year contracts with local growers, who harvest, locally store, and deliver feedstock in low-density format to the conversion facility. While the conventional system is designed for high biomass yield areas, pilot scale operations have experienced feedstock supply shortages and price volatilities due to reduced harvests and competition from other industries. Regional supply dependency and the inability to actively manage feedstock stability and quality, provide operational risks to the biorefinery, which translate into higher investment risk. The advanced feedstock supply system based on a network of depots can mitigate many of these risks and enable wider supply system benefits. This paper compares the two concepts from a system-level perspective beyond mere logistic costs. It shows that while processing operations at the depot increase feedstock supply costs initially, they enable wider system benefits including supply risk reduction (leading to lower interest rates on loans), industry scale-up, conversion yield improvements, and reduced handling equipment and storage costs at the biorefinery. When translating these benefits into cost reductions per liter of gasoline equivalent (LGE), we find that total cost reductions between –$0.46 to –$0.21 per LGE for biochemical and –$0.32 to –$0.12 per LGE for thermochemical conversion pathways are possible. Naturally, these system level benefits will differ between individual actors along the feedstock supply chain. Further research is required with respect to depot sizing, location, and ownership structures.