Original scientific paper
Modeling Harvest Forest Residue Collection for Bioenergy Production
Rene Zamora-Cristales
orcid.org/0000-0002-6090-6678
; Oregon State University Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management Corvallis, Oregon 97331 USA
John Sessions
; Oregon State University Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management Corvallis, Oregon 97331 USA
Abstract
Forest harvest residues are often available at roadside landings as a byproduct of the log manufacturing process. This residue is usually available for renewable energy production if desired, however there is a significant amount of residues that do not reach the landing during the harvesting process and could potentially increase the supply of forest biomass from each harvest unit. The proportion of recoverable residues depends on their collection costs, which are a function of the distance from roadside landing, terrain conditions, and collection method.
In this study, a forest residue collection model using forwarders and excavator-base loaders was developed to estimate the potential cost of biomass extraction from the forest to roadside landings. At the operational level, the model calculates the potential forwarder paths to estimate the cost depending on slope, machine arrangement and distance. For the analyzed harvest unit, the use of the excavator-base loader working alone is the most cost effective system for distances of less than 50 m and two forwarders and one excavator-base loader is the most cost effective system for distances beyond 50 m. The optimal solution collection costs ranged from USD 7.2 to 27.5 per oven-dry tonne for a range of distance between 15 and 350 m. The use of one operator to trade positions as forwarder operator and excavator-base loader operator resulted in lower productivity and higher cost compared to the use of a separate operator for each machine.
Keywords
biomass; forwarder; simulation; spatial analysis
Hrčak ID:
173829
URI
Publication date:
1.6.2016.
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