The production of 2nd generation bioethanol has reached a pilot stage. Some bioethanol plants are under construction around the world. Among them, one is being built in North-West of Italy by Chemtex. The planned yearly production is 40,000 t/year of bioethanol. The crop being selected as biomass is the Giant Reed (Arundo donax), that is a perennial crop; do not require irrigation and its cultivation require much less inputs than corn for biomass. Farmers need some new information on these new crops for biomass production. Also new information is thus requested by the market or by public agencies: energy balance and life cycle analysis of crop cultivation, labor budget, etc. To make comparison between standard biomasses and new ones, there is a need of standard data and procedures in order to compare the cultivation systems, and to make all the requested assessment. The authors build a web application to do so within the frame of the IEE Project Bioenergy Farm. The tool allow the user, in anonymous way, to compute its own crop cultivation costs, including the use of machinery, manpower, and production factors in order to compare different farming systems. Both field and logistic operations could be evaluated. Also the energetic balance could be computed. The application represents a step toward the standardization of data and calculation procedures for working time, energy balance and operation costs. The application is accessible, free of charge, at http://bioenergyfarm.eu. In this paper an energy balance of giant reed crops, is presented. One farm with 10 fields (80 ha) located north of Turin, Italy, has been used to analyze the giant reed performance. The fields were located between 0.7 km and 14 km. The logistics plays an important role in quantifying the operation costs. For the case of Arundo donax this variation is translated to 90 €/ha between fields next to the farm and the one far from the farm (assuming 23 tDM/ha yield), depicting the importance of incorporating the geographical variability of the production system (that diversify the transport operations cost) and the field characteristics such as field shape, soil conditions etc. Similar analysis will be carried out on Giant Reed, on the same farm and the comparison will be made among the two crops.
Economic and Energetic Analysis of Biomass Production Systems by Means of Web Application: The Giant Reed Case
BUSATO, Patrizia;SOPEGNO, ALESSANDRO;BERRUTO, Remigio
2012-01-01
Abstract
The production of 2nd generation bioethanol has reached a pilot stage. Some bioethanol plants are under construction around the world. Among them, one is being built in North-West of Italy by Chemtex. The planned yearly production is 40,000 t/year of bioethanol. The crop being selected as biomass is the Giant Reed (Arundo donax), that is a perennial crop; do not require irrigation and its cultivation require much less inputs than corn for biomass. Farmers need some new information on these new crops for biomass production. Also new information is thus requested by the market or by public agencies: energy balance and life cycle analysis of crop cultivation, labor budget, etc. To make comparison between standard biomasses and new ones, there is a need of standard data and procedures in order to compare the cultivation systems, and to make all the requested assessment. The authors build a web application to do so within the frame of the IEE Project Bioenergy Farm. The tool allow the user, in anonymous way, to compute its own crop cultivation costs, including the use of machinery, manpower, and production factors in order to compare different farming systems. Both field and logistic operations could be evaluated. Also the energetic balance could be computed. The application represents a step toward the standardization of data and calculation procedures for working time, energy balance and operation costs. The application is accessible, free of charge, at http://bioenergyfarm.eu. In this paper an energy balance of giant reed crops, is presented. One farm with 10 fields (80 ha) located north of Turin, Italy, has been used to analyze the giant reed performance. The fields were located between 0.7 km and 14 km. The logistics plays an important role in quantifying the operation costs. For the case of Arundo donax this variation is translated to 90 €/ha between fields next to the farm and the one far from the farm (assuming 23 tDM/ha yield), depicting the importance of incorporating the geographical variability of the production system (that diversify the transport operations cost) and the field characteristics such as field shape, soil conditions etc. Similar analysis will be carried out on Giant Reed, on the same farm and the comparison will be made among the two crops.
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