Sunday, May 3, 2009
8-07
Uniform-format feedstock supply system for commodity-scale biomass intermediates
Christopher T. Wright, J. Richard Hess, and Kevin L. Kenney. Biofuels & Renewable Energy Technologies, Idaho National Laboratory, P.O. Box 1625 MS 2025, North Fremont Ave, Idaho Falls, ID 83415
As biorefining conversion technologies become commercial, feedstock availability, supply system logistics and biomass material attributes are emerging as major barriers to the availability of sustainable lignocellulosic feedstocks. The most significant impact these barriers have on a mature lignodellulosic industry is the combined cost associated with harvesting, preprocessing, handling and transporting the material outside of a 50-mile radius footprint. If not addressed, biorefineries will only locate in regions of high biomass production, limiting the participation of land owners in remote or lower production regions where a significant amount of biomass could still be available. In addition, small feedstock supply footprints restrict the size of biorefineries, reduce potential economies-of-scale gains, and increase the risk of supply disruptions due to weather, infrastructure, or competition. To overcome these barriers and decrease supply system risks, an advanced uniform-format feedstock supply system design is proposed that will produce an aerobically stable, mass and energy dense feedstock that meets the specifications of a commodity-scale intermediate product. This uniformly formatted product would then have the attributes necessary to feed a variety of markets including, biochemical fermentation, gasification, pyrolysis, direct combustion, or other conversion technologies. The key to this supply system is a distributed, value add processing facility (Biomass Depot) that takes in low density, unstable biomass and distributes high density, stable commodity products.