Feedstock Transportation, Agricultural Processing, Logistic from Farm to Bio-refinery: Recent Developments, Mechanization, and Cost Analysis

Abstract

The ever increasing energy demand, high energy costs, predicted scarcity of fossil fuel, and their severe implication on environment have substantially fueled the search for sustainable alternatives of crude petroleum sources. Biofuels that are derived from plant biomass are renewable and have best answers to replace petroleum products. First-generation biofuels have proved their scale and success to compete with gasoline but are restricted to attain their goals because of alarming socioeconomic consequences, climate change mitigation, food/feed concerns, and use of arable agricultural lands. These issues have called for the development of second generation biofuels, which do not compete directly with food and feed crops. Crop residues are primary feedstock for biofuel production in near future. However, second generation biofuel are in initial stage of technology development and have several challenges for large-scale production as their production costs are substantially higher compared to first-generation biofuels. Crop residue management and transportation of crop residues from agricultural farm to factory (processing site) are two very important cost contribution factors in the overall economics of biomass conversion into biofuels. Second-generation biofuels cannot be cost competitive without significant reformation in production technologies, feedstock cultivars, and most importantly, biomass feedstock supply logistics. In Indian context, there is a lot to be done in the biomass collection followed by cost-competitive storage and supply system logistics. This chapter summarizes the recent advances, mechanization, and economic analysis with regard to crop residues transportation, agricultural processing, and logistic from farm to bio-refinery.