Dry matter losses and their economic significance in forest energy procurement

ABSTRACT

The value chain of forest biomass for energy always includes storing of the biomass. Biomass in natural conditions is always exposed to biological processes, some of them harmful. Dry matter losses caused by biological processes, such as composting and decaying, were studied by the weight monitoring method. After defining dry matter losses as 0.07–1.52% per month for small size delimbed roundwood under study, the total amount and economic scale of losses were calculated to gain an understanding about the phenomenon from the value chain management point of view. Losses during energy wood storing may be significant even with 3–6 months of storing. With 1-year storing time, economic losses varied between 91,000 and 373,000 euros, if the amount stored is 100,000 m³. The economic losses were 4–17% of the energy wood procurement costs, depending on the storage time, raw material and dry matter loss rate. Energy content of the storage can increase during the 12-month storage period if the dry matter losses are low, which requires careful storage management of energy wood.

KEYWORDS:

• Energy wood
• storing
• natural drying
• dry matter loss
• economic loss

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the research consortium project FORBIO (decision no. 293380) funded by the Strategic Research Council of Academy of Finland.

The work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES) (Laava project, grant number 70016/11), the Sustainable Bioenergy Solutions for Tomorrow (BEST) research program coordinated by FIBIC Ltd and CLEEN Ltd, and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme, INFRES e project [grant number 311881, 2012-2015]. Special thanks go to the research team of Mekrijärvi Research Station for implementing the drying rack experiments and to Dr Tapani Repo for mathematical advice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Regional Development Fund [70016/11]; FP7 International Cooperation [311881]; Strategic Research Council [293380].