Miscanthus x giganteus

In 2013 a series of meetings was held across the US with each of the Sun Grant Regional Feedstock Partnership crop teams and the resource assessment team, led by the Oregon State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to review, standardize, and verify energy crop yield trials from 2007-2012 and assimilate their outcomes into a national model of biomass yield suitability. The meetings provided a way to “ground truth” yield estimates in order to accurately capture interactions of climate and soils for dedicated energy crops, including energycane, upland and lowland switchgrass, biomass sorghum, CRP grasses, hybrid poplar, willow, pine, and miscanthus x giganteus (in 2014). The verification of yield data included generating a standardized set of management assumptions for each crop and summarizing site potential yield according to the agreed cultural practices to establish, manage, and harvest each crop. From these sets of funded trials and historical data, yield was estimated across spatial gradients according to soil characteristics and climate history at a 2-week interval. The resulting national grids provide critical information for policymakers and planners of the potential productivity of these pre-commercial crops. This document summarizes the crop model and county-level results from the mapping activities (draft of document, July 31, 2014)

This document provides presentation style maps of potential crop yield of dedicated bioenergy crops from the publication "Productivity Potential of Bioenergy Crops from the Sun Grant Regional Feedstock Partnership." 2013. Eaton, Laurence, Chris Daly, Mike Halbleib, Vance Owens, Bryce Stokes. ORNL/TM-2013/574.

Abstract:
In 2013 a series of meetings was held across the US with each of the crop teams and the resource assessment team, led by the Oregon State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to review, standardize, and verify yield trials from 2007-2012 crop years and assimilate their outcomes into a national model of biomass yield suitability. The meetings provided a way to “ground truth” yield estimates in order to accurately capture interactions of climate and soils for dedicated energy crops, including switchgrass, energycane, biomass sorghum, CRP grasses, miscanthus x giganteus, hybrid poplar, willow, and pine. The verification of yield data included generating a standardized set of management assumptions for each crop and summarizing site potential yield according to the agreed cultural practices to establish, manage, and harvest each crop. From these sets of funded trials and historical data, yield was estimated across spatial gradients according to soil characteristics and climate history at a 2-week interval. The resulting national grids provide critical information for policymakers and planners of the potential productivity of these pre-commercial crops.

Abstract: Distributed storage and pre-processing of biomass feedstock at satellite storage locations (storage
depots) has been proposed in literature to reduce costs and improve efficiency of the supply system. The performance of such a system, however, has not yet been rigorously quantified and compared with conventional alternatives. This work presents such an analysis using the BioFeed optimization model. BioFeed is a system-level model that optimizes the important feedstock production activities and determines the optimal system configuration on a regional basis. The BioFeed model was first modified to enable modeling of mechanical pre-processing, such as pelletization and grinding, at the input or the output of storage facilities, which can be mandatory or optional. The model was used to study different Miscanthus production scenarios in southern Illinois. The results showed that making storage pre-processing mandatory increased the total cost by up to 16–53% as compared to the base case. However, it reduced the farmers’ share of the total cost by up to 13–39%. The exact values depended on the particular pre-processing technology and scenario modeled. The most cost-effective system consisted of a combination of pre-processing on the farms as well as at the storage facilities. The study recommended that biomass output from a hammer mill should be the biorefinery delivery specification; the hammer mills should be installed at the input of the storage facilities, but pre-processing at the storage facility should be optional. This led to the minimum total cost of 46.4 $ Mg−1.