Abstract
The balance of production activities at the landing is pivotal to the success of any forest harvesting operation and has a direct impact on the cost and efficiency of the enterprise. The primary objective of this study was to understand the operational characteristics of the loader in a hot operation (handling both sawlog and biomass components concurrently) and cold operation (handling biomass and sawlogs separately) for harvesting sawlogs and biomass. Systematic work sampling techniques were employed to obtain “snapshots” of the loader activities for a cable logging operation, including the interaction of the loader with other operational phases and delay time for both hot and cold configurations. The results show that for hot loading at the landing, the yarder was the most utilized machine (85%), and was the bottleneck of the operation, followed by the loader (70%). In the hot loading configuration, 39% of operational delay during truck loading was caused by the loader and was predominantly due to movement of the loader within or between the landings. This was followed by the yarder (19%, due to rigging activities) and the chaser (15%, to maintain the crews’ safety). In the cold loading configuration, delays due to the unavailability of roll-off bins constituted up to 77% of the operational delay. This suggests that the number of bins and trucks hauling biomass has a crucial role in the overall efficiency of the biomass harvesting system, and should be well balanced with loading capacity. Additionally, the choice of hot or cold biomass loading operations is highly dependent on the site and operating conditions.
Highlights
Woody biomass energy has been recognized as a major contributor in the renewable energy sector, representing 2% of the total annual energy consumption of the US during 2018 [1]
If forest residues produced by forest management were not being utilized for energy production, they would be burned on-site for disposal, which is a common practice with significant emissions and fire risk considerations [3]
Various aspects of recovering forest residues consisting of tree-tops, off-shoots, branches, foliage, non-merchantable and small-diameter trees left after timber harvest have been widely researched, Forests 2020, 11, 385; doi:10.3390/f11040385
Summary
Woody biomass energy has been recognized as a major contributor in the renewable energy sector, representing 2% of the total annual energy consumption of the US during 2018 [1]. According to the Renewable Energy Directive, the European Union is expecting woody biomass to contribute about 20%. Forests 2020, 11, 385 including harvesting operations, logistics, biomass recovery, moisture content, and economic and environmental benefits [2,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. The major focus remains on the financial viability of biomass recovery. The reason for this can be primarily attributed to the comparatively high cost of handling and low value of the feedstock generated [14]
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