Systems Informatics and Analysis - Engineering and Science of Biomass Feedstock Production and Provision - page 190

well as limited commercial farming. In contrast, interest in studying the regional/
national/global systems has increased in recent years. We conclude that greater efforts
are needed to validate these tools and to study issues cutting across multiple scales.
We also recommend that seamless integration of informatics, analysis, and decision
support tools is necessary to achieve a truly concurrent science, engineering, and
technology-based platform for decision making in the future.

8.1 Introduction

The preceding chapters discussed the important tasks in the biomass feedstock pro-
duction and provision (BFPP) value chain. The basic concepts in each task were
presented, and the major challenges and potential solutions were also identifi ed.
The implementation of the proposed solutions is expected to contribute towards
optimizing the individual tasks. However, focusing on individual tasks is often not
enough. These production and provision tasks are highly interdependent, with deci-
sions for one task having implications on upstream and downstream design and
operating constraints and decisions. The following examples highlight this aspect:

• Harvesting operations of Miscanthus in temperate regions are proposed in win-
ter, typically from January onwards. This allows translocation of nutrients to
rhizomes and also reduces moisture content of the harvested biomass. However,
late harvest reduces the harvestable biomass by more than 30 %. Moreover, fi eld
operations in winter are diffi cult due to extreme weather conditions.

• Single-pass harvesting such as with a self-propelled forage harvester (SPFH) that

combines mowing as well as further preprocessing has been recommended for
improved harvesting effi ciency and quality. However, chopped biomass from an
SPFH is of considerably low density (~80-100 kg m −3 ) as compared to baled
biomass. This makes storage and transportation highly ineffi cient and costly [ 1 ].

• Pelletized biomass is very effi cient for transportation and storage due to high bulk

density of the feedstock (~650 kg m −3 ) and availability of existing materials han-
dling equipment. Shastri et al. [ 1 ] showed that pelletization of Miscanthus reduced
the storage and transportation cost by about 60 % over baling. However, much
higher cost of pelletization increased the total Miscanthus production cost by about
8 %. The energy consumption was also substantially higher for pelletization.

These examples highlight the confl icts that are often encountered in designing
and operating the BFPP system. Such interdependencies cannot be captured by
studies focusing on a specifi c task. Therefore, it is critical to go beyond addressing
the task-specifi c challenges and instead focus on the compatibility of various tasks,
and thus try to achieve an overall optimal value chain confi guration. Systems-based
approaches that integrate systems informatics and analysis (SIA) techniques, such
as database design, simulation modeling, optimization, and decision support sys-
tems (DSS), provide the necessary tools to achieve these goals. The objective of this
chapter is to review the application of various SIA methods to study the BFPP sys-
tems. We highlight the important developments, identify research gaps, and provide
future research directions.