Principal Investigator Jarrod Goentzel
Co-investigator Rosemary T Berger
The biofuel supply chain comprises several stages and includes processes such as harvesting, collecting, processing, transporting, handling, warehousing, distributing, and retailing. To begin, biomass feedstock from agricultural residues, forest resources (e.g., hardwood and softwood residues, and thinnings), and dedicated cropping systems (e.g., poplar and switchgrass) must be transported to the refinery. However, unlike petroleum, biomass production is diverse, distributed, and seasonal, with significant fractions that cannot be used for fuel. Pretreatment facilities could allow biomass to be stored and transported economically to the biorefinery. The scale – location and size – of these pretreatment facilities is an important design decision; and these strategies may vary by geographic region according to supply-demand conditions. These strategies must also incorporate the inbound transportation of feedstock in its various forms to the biorefinery.
Biorefinery management offers further opportunities to optimize the combination of efficiency, capacity, and cost for each facility. Just as with pretreatment facilities, the size and location of biorefineries are critical design decisions. Further production planning regarding the product mix (i.e., quality or grade), batch size, and blending must be aligned with the available supply and the distribution plans.
Various distribution strategies can be deployed to move biofuel from biorefineries to marketing terminals before being trucked to service stations, truck stops, and other large-scale operations. Currently, most fuel is distributed through common carrier transportation providers using various modes (e.g., pipeline, barge, ship, rail, and truck). Assuming biofuels are fungible and can use existing distribution systems, there are still many opportunities to optimize the flow by using the appropriate mode and the option of intermediate breakout storage to achieve the lowest landed cost.
Specific analysis is needed to assess the role of numerous technologies and processes to transform biomass supply into fuel, various channels and methods for transporting feedstock and fuel, as well as diverse market conditions that impact demand and overall SC performance. Furthermore, robust assessment approaches are needed to estimate key measures, such as cost, revenue, environmental impact (e.g., GHG), oil displacement, and system safety and security. These measures are critical in determining the economic and environmental viability of the entire system.