Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Managing the moisture content of wood biomass for the optimisation of Ireland's transport supply strategy to bioenergy markets and competing industries
    The aim of this study was to analyse the supply of wood biomass (short wood) to the three peat power plants in Ireland and the impacts on the competing wood-based panel industries. The methodology includes the development of a spatial decision support tool based on LP (Linear Programming). It uses drying curves to assess the moisture content, weight and energy content of biomass during a two year period planning. Harvesting, chipping, storage and transportation costs are calculated based on the biomass moisture content. The model optimally allocates woodchips and logs from thinnings and clearfells. Results show that the planned maximum 30% co-firing rate at the three peat power station could be met with the forecasted short wood availability from both the private and public sector. The costs of supply increased not only with higher demands, but also with tighter constraints on the MC demanded by power plants. Spatial distribution and operational factors such as efficiency in transportation and truck loading showed to be sensitive to changes in MC. The analysis shows the benefits of managing the MC when optimising supply chains in order to deliver biomass to energy plants in a cost-effective manner.
      827Scopus© Citations 39
  • Publication
    Controlling moisture content and truck configurations to model and optimise biomass supply chain logistics in Ireland
    In the coming years, Ireland will continue to face an increasing demand for wood biomass as a renewable source of energy. This will result in strained supply/demand scenarios, which will call for new planning and logistics systems capable of optimizing the efficient use of the biomass resources. In this study, a linear programming tool was developed which includes moisture content (MC) as a driving factor for the cost optimisation of two supply chains that use short wood and whole trees from thinnings as material feedstock. The tool was designed and implemented to analyse the impact of moisture content and truck configurations (5-axle and 6-axle trucks) on supply chain costs and spatial distribution of the supply materials. The results indicate that the inclusion of wood chips from whole trees reduces the costs of wood energy supply in comparison with only producing wood chips from short wood to satisfy the demand, with 9.8% and 10.2% cost reduction when transported with 5-axle and 6-axle trucks respectively. Constraining the MC of the wood chips delivered to the power plant increases both transport and overall supply chain costs, due, firstly to an increase in the haulage distance and secondly, to the number of counties providing the biomass material. In terms of truck configuration, the use of 6-axle trucks resulted in a 14.8% reduction in the number of truckloads and a 12.3% reduction in haulage costs in comparison to the use of 5-axle trucks across the MC scenarios analysed.
      957Scopus© Citations 73