Analysis of transport costs for energy crops for use in biomass pyrolysis plant networks

J.G. Rogers, John G. Brammer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Fast pyrolysis of biomass produces a liquid bio-oil that can be used for electricity generation. Bio-oil can be stored and transported so it is possible to decouple the pyrolysis process from the generation process. This allows each process to be separately optimised. It is necessary to have an understanding of the transport costs involved in order to carry out techno-economic assessments of combinations of remote pyrolysis plants and generation plants. Published fixed and variable costs for freight haulage have been used to calculate the transport cost for trucks running between field stores and a pyrolysis plant. It was found that the key parameter for estimating these costs was the number of round trips a day a truck could make rather than the distance covered. This zone costing approach was used to estimate the transport costs for a range of pyrolysis plants size for willow woodchips and baled miscanthus. The possibility of saving transport costs by producing bio-oil near to the field stores and transporting the bio-oil to a central plant was investigated and it was found that this would only be cost effective for large generation plants.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1367-1375
Number of pages9
JournalBiomass and Bioenergy
Volume33
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2009

Keywords

  • miscanthus
  • willow
  • transport fast pyrolysis bio-oil
  • biomass supply networks

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