(332a) Development and Demonstration of Advanced Supply Chain Equipment for Harvest, Delivery, and Processing of Herbaceous Biomass

Results to date and future plans from several multi-year cooperatively-funded industry/government development and demonstration projects will be presented. These projects have been co-funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office to develop and demonstrate innovative new equipment and methods for round- and square-baled herbaceous biomass, and to develop and demonstrate new methods for sustainably building and harvesting future herbaceous biomass supplies. A primary project objective is to demonstrate an advanced biomass supply chain for delivering high impact, high quality feedstocks from the field to the throat of a biorefinery. Photos, video, and measured performance results from the project’s demonstrations will be provided. Among the developments discussed will be: a new header that will enable efficient variable-rate sustainable harvest of corn stover; a new header enabling a 2x to 3x reduction of field passes for baling equipment; a self-propelled baler operating with crop-adjustable headers and a 6-pack bale accumulator; a bale gathering vehicle capable of collecting 36 bales per trip to the field, self-loading and unloading bale trailers that can reduce load/unload times to 5 minutes per truckload; new automated receiving, handling, pre-processing equipment for round and square bales for biorefinery or biomass depot operations; a near-infrared bale probe that enables instantaneous determination of moisture, ash, glucan, and xylan content in the field or a process line; and harvest and processing operations to help reduce dirt content in biomass delivered to the process. Dirt content in delivered corn stover has been a significant challenge for initial commercial-scale biorefineries. Harvest operations and results from corn stover harvests from one to over two tons per acre, and from switchgrass harvests of up to eight tons per acre will be presented and discussed. Preliminary results of pre-processing testing at Idaho National Lab’s Process Demonstration Unit will also be presented and discussed.