3-02: Techno-economic assessment of granulation based biomass supply logistics system for a biorefinery

Economic and efficient conversion of biomass into fuels and chemicals depends not only on the cost of feedstock but also the quality of feedstock delivered to a biorefinery. Feedstock cost has become one of the major challenges that limit the growth of biofuel industries in US. The existing baling based feedstock supply logistics system has several challenges including high cost, low bulk density, other storage issues. The existing pelleting and briquetting preprocesses eliminate several issues with biomass quality, handling and storage issues, but they pose an economic constrain for its immediate adaptation at large scale. This paper investigates a granulation based lignocellulosic feedstock supply logistic system to potentially reduce the cost of feedstock without compromising other handling, storage and quality issues. Granulation is a process of agglomerating fine particles by shear/vibrating forces with or without liquid binders. Starch is a primary binder used for this process, although other binders such as lignin, oils, enzymes etc can be used. We developed a techno-economic model for granulation of lignocellulosic biomass and integrated with our existing feedstock supply logistics model, IBSAL (Integrated Biomass Supply Analysis and Logistics) to calculate the feedstock delivered cost, energy input and environmental emissions. The developed system will be compared with pelleting, baling and chopping based supply logistics systems to propose an improved feedstock supply logistics system.