(106a) Uniform-Format Feedstock Supply System Design for Woody Biomass

Fuels derived from cellulosic biomass are an important contributor to the growth of bioenergy. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) aims to displace 30% of the 2004 gasoline use with biofuels by 2030 as outlined in The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, requiring nearly a billion tons of biomass to be sustainably delivered to biorefineries. Further, for biofuels to be economically competitive, the feedstock supply system cannot contribute more that 30% of the total cost of the biofuel production. Increasing the use of biomass introduces many challenges, including those related to the economic, efficient, and reliable supply of quality feedstock to the biorefineries. They are over 360 million dry tons of woody resources produced annually in the U.S., millions of tons of which are un-used or under used due to the high cost associated with collection, preprocessing, and transportation. In addition, the high moisture content poses challenges in terms of stability and conversion efficiency for thermochemical processes. The Uniform-Format feedstock supply system addresses these and other challenges associated with sustainably integrating and increased amount of woody biomass into the biofuels feedstock supply stream, while meeting cost, quantity, and quality targets. The woody feedstock supply system model developed by the Idaho National Laboratory is used to determine supply system costs by tracking material flows, and equipment performance parameters and costs throughout every step of the supply chain, from point of harvest to the throat of the conversion reactor. Advanced implementations of the Uniform-Format supply system design move the preprocessing operations from the biorefinery to earlier in the supply chain, therein reducing material variability at the biorefinery by decreasing handling costs, increasing transport efficiency, and increasing material stability. The Uniform-Format design also vastly increases resource availability by producing a commodity feedstock, which brings remote resources into the mix.

This presentation will show a detailed description of the conventional woody supply system and costs associated with each operation, for the point of harvest to the throat of the biorefinery. We will also show the design for the first implementations of advanced supply system concepts, and will present some results from the sensitivity analysis that determine the major barriers to meeting DOE cost and quantity targets for woody biomass.