Harvesting

The availability of adequate logistic systems, which include harvesting, recovery, compacting, transport, upgrading and storage, represents a basic requirement for the utilization of biomass as feedstock for industrial and energy purposes. Harvesting operations have a significant effect on the energy ratio balance and cost of the overall biomass system, hence the use of appropriate technologies and systems is essential for a large scale introduction of biomass to the energy market. Technologies and methods for harvesting are as diverse as the properties and characteristics of biomass fuels.

Looking at the forest harvesting systems, use of the manual chainsaw remains the most common method of harvesting woody biomass. However, there is a trend towards more mechanized systems due to safety reasons as well as economic costs. One of the key issues is the degree of integration between forest fuel recovery and other harvesting operations. For short rotation forests, the most important characteristics of the crops from the harvesting standpoint are the moisture content and hardness of the stem.

Wood residues harvesting in Finland		SRC willows harvesting		Chipper collecting Sycamore stems - DOE/NREL		NREL researchers in the DOE Biofuels Program are developing technology to also produce ethanol from the fibrous material (cellulose and hemicellulose) in the corn stalks – DOE/NREL