Herbaceous Feedstock 2018 State of Technology Report (2020)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) promotes the production of advanced liquid transportation fuels from lignocellulosic biomass by funding fundamental and applied research that advances the state of technology (SOT). As part of its involvement with this mission, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) completes an annual SOT report for biomass feedstock logistics. This report summarizes supply system impacts of Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)-funded research and development efforts at INL and elsewhere (such as the High-Tonnage Feedstock Logistics projects (Webb et al. 2013a, Webb et al. 2013b, Webb et al. 2013c, Webb and Sokhansanj 2014, Sokhansanj et al. 2014) that lead to improvements in feedstock supply systems. These include improvements to and observed performance of innovative harvest and collection methods, storage technologies, transportation and handling approaches, and advanced preprocessing technologies. Biomass quality and variability, and the interface between feedstock quality and conversion performance are key drivers in addition to delivered feedstock cost. In this report, we estimate the benefits of R&D improvements to individual supply system unit operations, and present the status of feedstock logistics technology development for converting biomass into biofuels. These analyses are supported by experimental data where possible, and help to align the SOT relative to the cost goals defined in the Multi-Year Program Plan. The 2018 Herbaceous SOT aligned feedstock logistic design with current biorefinery’s design capacity utilized by biochemical conversion platform. Currently biochemical conversion platform utilizes a 725,000 dry ton/year biorefiney design for the techno economic analysis. Hence, feedstock delivered cost in the 2018 Herbaceous SOT is calculated based on biorefinery’s 725,000 dry ton design capacity instead of 800, 000 dry ton capacity utilized in the 2017 Herbaceous SOT. Biomass availabilities in this SOT were updated to year 2018 data from the 2016 Billion-Ton Report (BT16) (DOE 2016a), with the exception of switchgrass, for which the 2018 Herbaceous SOT utilized the 2019 switchgrass availability data from BT16. The BT16 report (DOE 2016a) does not project switchgrass availability in 2018; the soonest switchgrass is available in the BT16 report is 2019. Therefore, availability of switchgrass for this analysis was that projected for 2019. The 2018 Herbaceous SOT incorporates same technologies utilized in the 2017 Herbaceous SOT. However, a sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the impact of variation of process parameters on those technologies on feedstock logistic cost. New R&D data that shows the variations of process parameters affecting process performance is incorporated in the 2018 SOT to measure the variations in delivered feedstock cost. The 2018 Herbaceous SOT has also provided projected delivered feedstock of 2022 design case based on near term technical target under BETO funded R&D project. Finally, updated biorefinery size of 725,000 dry ton/year was incorporated within least-cost formulation model to select optimal siting and depot scales during optimization of the least cost blend. This modification to the optimization algorithm allows the trade-off between the cost of increased supply radius and the savings from selecting biomass from higher producing counties to be assessed. Such optimization has also showed the economic benefit of decentralized depots in comparison to centralized preprocessing co-located with the biorefinery by decoupling the biorefinery and feedstock locations. The 2018 Herbaceous SOT report documents the current modeled cost of a herbaceous feedstock supply system (from harvest to the pretreatment reactor throat, including grower payment) for hydrocarbon fuel production via biochemical conversion, based on equipment and processes now available or potentially available in the near term. The modeled cost also considers both the required quality and the availability of the biomass resources. The 2018 Herbaceous SOT predicts a modeled delivered feedstock cost of $83.67/dry ton (2016$); this is a $0.23/dry ton (2016$) decrease from the 2017 Herbaceous SOT. The modification of biorefinery’s designed capacity and increased projected biomass availability in the same supply shed contributed to this modeled cost reduction. The least-cost formulation model to optimally site and scale local distributed preprocessing depots also contributed to the cost reduction by considering county-level grower payment and distance from the biorefinery as variables in the optimization algorithm. Sensitivity analysis on various process parameters that affect delivered feedstock cost in the 2018 Herbaceous SOT shows that the delivered cost could varies from $80.45-$88.83/dry ton. The top factors that causes such variations are: effective baling rate, bale density, hammer mill throughput, interest rate and storage dry matter loss.