Transportation and Delivery
Transport of the feedstock after harvesting, pre-processing and storage is a key element to the successful and profitable use of biomass. The way transport is organized and distance to the end-user can have implications for the production system as a whole. When the commodity is forest fuel, the transported product is actually energy. The goal should be to transport energy as efficiently as possible. This is not necessarily the same as optimizing transport of a physical load.
A basic problem of forest energy transportation is that slash, un-delimbed small trees and tree-sections, are the typical forest bioenergy products (Hakkila 1989). "Its low bulk density increases the cost of transportation. Water is a major constituent of the transported mass and the complex texture of the material makes handling technically difficult. Bulk density may be increased by compaction or by chipping. Processing into chips will decrease durability during storage. Green chips are highly vulnerable to microbiological, physical and chemical degradation which can cause health hazards, loss of substance, loss of energy content and add to the risk of self-ignition" (Bjorheden and Eriksson 1990; Kofman 1994). Chipping can only be recommended if it takes place shortly before consumption" (Richardson 2002).
Selection of transport systems is affected by the quality and structure of the forest road network and by conditions at the landings. To become the exclusive transport flow, comminution at the heating plant must generally be 30-45 percent less expensive than chipping at the landing, in order to compensate for the high cost of slash transport. For more information, please see the Storage section.
Water-based transport of feedstock is possible. This can be applied in two different situations. First, feedstock can be transported on barges along rivers in the southern United States. Barges have long been used to transport wood raw material especially hardwoods within the Mississippie river corridor. Secondly, the biomass can be exported to other countries in bulk transport ships. Chipped biomass is currently being texported via ships from several ports in the South. Aruna (1997) says that sea transport is the most efficient means of transporting bulky biofuels from Sweden to other countries.
Encyclopedia ID: p1296
