Agriculture Reference
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Fig. 7.1 On-farm open-air storage on natural soil without any protection
relative comparison of these storage methods in terms of cost, dry matter loss, qual-
ity degradation, and ease of handling when loading and unloading.
On-farm open storage is by far the most common approach to store agricultural
residue such as corn stover. The open storage could be on regular soil (Fig. 7.1 ),
gravel pads (Fig. 7.2 ), or paved surfaces. Moreover, the material, typically in baled
form, might be covered with a tarpaulin for additional protection (Fig. 7.3 ). Due to
the low-value, high-volume nature of biomass feedstock, this method of storage is
often proposed in literature as well as used for various analyses for cost calcula-
tions. Open storage is acceptable for agricultural residues since those are viewed as
by-products of grain production, and the quality specifications are not that stringent
for their final use. Thus, the quality degradation and high dry matter loss for open
storage are not of major concern. However, if the feedstock is to be used for ethanol
production, this may become a critical issue, as highlighted in the subsequent sec-
tions. Rigdon et al. [ 7 ] showed that uncovered storage for sorghum led to a reduc-
tion in dry matter content from 88 to 59.9 %, cellulose content from 35.3 to 25 %,
and final ethanol yield from 0.2 to 0.02 g L −1 . This strongly suggests that some form
of covering is desirable.
On-farm covered storage will address these problems to a certain extent (Fig. 7.4 ).
The feedstock would be protected from rain and snow. However, wind and other
factors may still lead to significant dry matter losses, especially if the moisture con-
tent is high. Covered storage with walls will provide adequate protection against
severe weather conditions. However, such facilities require additional capital invest-
ment, thereby making them cost-effective at a larger scale. Recently, there has been
substantial interest is setting up regional preprocessing depots, also known as
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