Costs and Carbon Emissions Analysis of Biomass Supply Logistics
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Li, Kun-Chou
Abstract
Torrefaction is a thermal pretreatment technology performed at atmospheric pressure in the absence of oxygen. The process can convert biomass at modest scales into dense energy carriers that ease transportation and handling. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of torrefaction on a two biomass (rice straw and Pennisetum) supply chain logistics. The logistics involves biomass collection, handling, transport, storage, and centralized or distributed torrefaction. We evaluate four alterations to a hypothetical Taoyuan county’s biomass collecting network to discern the conditions under which the changes constitute logistics improvements to cost, energy, and emissions. A spreadsheet tool was developed to analyze the cost of the whole process based on parameters from literature data or local data.
The available biomass of rice straw and Pennisetum in Taoyuan county were 75342 and 59323 ton/year, respectively. The results showed that the logistic costs of rice straw were $2371 - 2988 per ton, with roughly 26 - 45% transport costs. At 35% electric generation efficiency, the profit of generating electric power from rice straw with centralized/ distributed torrefaction can be as low as 0.02/ 0.25 $/kWh, in contrast to -0.27/ -0.14 $/kWh without torrefaction. For Pennisetum, the logistic costs were $1348 - 1925 per ton, with roughly 42 - 72% transport costs. Although the consideration of torrefied biomass would increase the total costs, the utilization of that can be in place of coal consumption by 11,900 ton-coal/year, and reduce CO2 emissions up to 0.0376% of the whole country CO2 emissions in Taiwan, in contrast to 0.0263% with non-torrefied biomass.
Subjects
Logistics
Biomass supply chain
Torrefaction
Rice straw
CO2 emissions
Type
thesis
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