The effect of feedstock densification on structural sugar release and yield in and biofuel feedstock and feedstock blends
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efficiency and decrease costs under conventional supply systems. The 2012 programmatic target was to demonstrate a biomass logistics cost of $55/dry Ton for woody biomass delivered to fast pyrolysis conversion facility. The goal was achieved by applying field and process demonstration unit-scale data from harvest, collection, storage, preprocessing, handling, and transportation operations into INL’s biomass logistics model.
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Abstract The sustainable supply of high‐quality, low‐cost biomass feedstock to cellulosic biorefineries is still a challenge. Utilizing corn stover as the single feedstock to a biorefinery also poses a source of risk to seasonal feedstock availability, affordability, and sustainability. Implementing a year‐round feedstock switching strategy or utilizing an optimal mixture of corn stover, miscanthus, and switchgrass is demonstrated to diminish these concerns while reducing the cost of sugar production by as much as 3.8% and 13.6%, respectively, when compared to a baseline sugar price of 441.9 $ metric ton −1 (t) attributed to a fixed corn stover feedstock basis. This study determines that a mixing ratio of corn stover, miscanthus, and switchgrass of 36%, 50%, and 14%, respectively, minimizes the selling price of sugar. If miscanthus is sufficiently available in the future, its fraction could be further increased to 70% by reducing the fraction of corn stover. We find that the mixed feedstock considered in this study reduces the nutrient replacement and feedstock transportation costs and improves the quality of feedstock (determined by total carbohydrates and ash) relative to corn stover alone. Results suggest that a high‐quality feedstock with a high carbohydrate content is an important metric for consideration, beyond strictly the feedstock cost, to reduce the selling price of sugar and its uncertainties. In the future this may be supported by the increased availability of higher carbohydrate feedstocks such as miscanthus. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Corn stover
Cellulosic ethanol
Stover
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The U.S. Department of Energy promotes the production of a range of liquid fuels and fuel blendstocks from lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks by funding fundamental and applied research that advances the state of technology in biomass collection, conversion, and sustainability. As part of its involvement in this program, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) investigates the feedstock logistics economics and sustainability of these fuels. Between 2000 and 2012, INL conducted a campaign to quantify the economics and sustainability of moving biomass from standing in the field or stand to the throat of the biomass conversion process. The goal of this program was to establish the current costs based on conventional equipment and processes, design improvements to the current system, and to mark annual improvements based on higher efficiencies or better designs. The 2012 programmatic target was to demonstrate a delivered biomass logistics cost of $35/dry ton. This goal was successfully achieved in 2012 by implementing field and process demonstration unit-scale data from harvest, collection, storage, preprocessing, handling, and transportation operations into INL's biomass logistics model. Looking forward to 2017, the programmatic target is to supply biomass to the conversion facilities at a total cost of $80/dry ton and on specification with in-feed requirements. The goal of the 2017 Design Case is to enable expansion of biofuels production beyond highly productive resource areas by breaking the reliance of cost-competitive biofuel production on a single, abundant, low-cost feedstock. If this goal is not achieved, biofuel plants are destined to be small and/or clustered in select regions of the country that have a lock on low-cost feedstock. To put the 2017 cost target into perspective of past accomplishments of the cellulosic ethanol pathway, the $80 target encompasses total delivered feedstock cost, including both grower payment and logistics costs, while meeting all conversion in-feed quality targets. The 2012 $35 programmatic target included only logistics costs with a limited focus on biomass quality
Lignocellulosic Biomass
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Lignocellulosic Biomass
Renewable resource
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Characterization
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Early lignocellulosic biorefineries have been plagued with numerous issues that involve feedstock handling problems and variations in conversion efficacy that stem from feedstock variability and complexity in dimensional, physical, chemical, and mechanical attributes. Feedstock ash and moisture content vary considerably in corn stover harvested from farms for bioconversion, and their effects on preprocessing (grinding/milling) and subsequent chemical and enzymatic conversion to fermentable sugars is systematically explored here using pilot-scale hammer mill grinders and a chemical hydrolysis reactor. Corn stover with high ash content due to contamination from soil was found to (1) consume higher power during grinding resulting in reductions of processing rates and (2) produce a larger fraction of fines in the feedstock that were lost to dust mitigation systems causing higher mechanical wear rates. Corn stover feedstock coming from fields with a high residual moisture content resulting in bale degradation due to self-heating caused a more pronounced drop in preprocessing throughput due to grinder overloads and process upsets leading to equipment downtime. Conversion yield to sugars was not affected, although differences in fermentation performance on these sugar streams was not examined. The overall process throughput was only 40–70% of nameplate capacity due to preprocessing problems.
Corn stover
Lignocellulosic Biomass
Biorefining
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Lignocellulosic Biomass
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