Biomass Supply Chain Logistics (BSCL): Advances in Bioenergy Engineering to Address Biomass Quality and Quantity Issues

Dear Colleagues,

The biofuel and biochemical industries’ success depends on an economical and reliable supply of biomass that meets the biorefining quality standards. Biomass, in its raw form, lacks both the bulk and energy densities compared to conventional feedstocks and other necessary quality characteristics, such as desirable moisture content, carbohydrate content, particle size and distribution, ash content, and chemical composition, depending upon the conversion process. These properties are highly variable even within a species and depend on various factors, including the methods used in harvest, the harvesting season, the geographical location, local weather, and how the material is preprocessed and pretreated. Addressing these issues is critical to supplying biorefineries/handling centers with feedstock ready to convert and meet the quantities necessary to operate biorefineries at the designed capacities and ensure that they are productive and sustainable.

The unit operations in biomass supply chain logistics (BSCL), such as harvesting methods and mechanical, chemical, and thermal pretreatment technologies, can improve the physical, chemical, and rheological properties of biomass, thereby making the biomass better suited to meeting the specifications in terms of density, particle size, ash composition, and carbohydrate content for both biochemical and thermochemical conversion applications.

Mechanical preprocessing technologies like size reduction and densification are critical to meeting the particle size specification and density. These specifications directly impact the front-end operations of the biorefineries, like the transportation, storage, handling, and feeding of the reactors for the conversion. Developing energy-efficient grinding and densification technologies will help to address the storage, feeding, and handling issues and reduce preprocessing costs. High-temperature drying technologies are used to make biomass aerobically stable, but they are energy- and capital-intensive and not environmentally friendly. High-temperature thermal methods, such as torrefaction, significantly improve biomass's physical, chemical, and energy properties. The ash content of the biomass is not convertible to sugars, which results in equipment erosion during preprocessing and acts as an inhibitor during biochemical and thermochemical conversion. Ash removal is cost- and energy-intensive, and so using the right technology will significantly impact the cost. Chemical methods such as washing, leaching, and acid and alkali pretreatment of herbaceous biomass can efficiently modify the ash composition to produce clean biomass, and can be used for firing/co-firing with coal. Also, during chemical pretreatment, the biomass undergoes structural changes, which can further help in the mechanical preprocessing such as grinding and densification and reduce the equipment's wear.

Even though much research and many developments have been established in the field of biomass production and processing for energy and biofuels, the research on BSCL is in its initial stages. Furthermore, the advances made in these areas, from industries, research organizations, and academia, need to be captured for better usage by the different stakeholders. Therefore, this Special Issue focuses on the current state and advances in technology in the BSCL scenarios followed by the industries, various unit operations in supply chain logistics, techno-economic analysis, and their impact on quality and cost. This Special Issue also reports on the challenges associated with the futuristic BSCL scenarios of supplying quality biomass in adequate quantities to biorefineries for them to operate efficiently and economically in a sustainable manner.

Dr. Jaya Shankar Tumuluru
Dr. Igathinathane Cannayen
Guest Editors

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• biomass logistics
• supply chain logistics
• unit operations
• biomass preprocessing
• biomass pretreatment
• mechanical preprocessing
• thermal pretreatments
• chemical preprocessing
• biomass quality
• bioenergy
• biofuels
• renewable energy