Costs of Harvesting, Storing in a Large Pile, and Transporting Corn Stover in a Wet Form
2007
Turhollow, A.F. | Sokhansanj, S.
Corn stover is potentially an attractive biomass resource, but must be stored if used to supply a biorefinery year-round. Based on experience with successfully storing water-saturated large piles of bagasse for the pulping industry, Atchison and Hettenhaus (2003) proposed that such a system can also be applied to corn stover. Regardless of the technical feasibility of this system, in this article we estimate the cost of harvesting corn stover in a single pass with corn grain, delivering the chopped biomass to a storage pile, storing the stover in a wet form in a large pile at 75% moisture in a 211,700-dry Mg facility within a radius of 24 km from the field, and transporting the stover 64 km to a biorefinery. Field-ground corn stover can be delivered to a biorefinery by rail for $55 to $61/dry Mg. Truck transport is more expensive, $71 to $77/dry Mg. To achieve a minimum cost in the system proposed by Atchison and Hettenhaus, it is necessary to field densify stover to 74 dry kg/m3, without losing combine field efficiency, have a large storage pile to spread fixed costs of storage over enough biomass, and use rail transportation. Compared to storage in an on-farm bunker silo at $60/dry Mg, there are limited circumstances in which large pile storage has a cost advantage.
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