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system has demonstrated the importance of pour rate and tonnes per harvester per year in reducing per tonne costs. The high power requirement for mallee chipping and the low speed at which harvesters can travel while cutting trees will limit the capacity of the new industry to reduce per-tonne costs. Increasing harvester performance will be critical to reduce harvesting costs. Key information that should be collected when the harvester commences full scale infield trials in order to inform decisions on improved harvesting systems includes data on material bulk density and whole-of-system performance. Information on losses which will include leaves, branches and twigs expelled during felling and feeding should be evaluated and quantified. Consideration will need to be given to appropriate tipping and pouring options. Harvester and chipper design could be impacted in terms of chip size and the trade-off between chipping costs (chip size) and transport costs (packing and bulk density). Consideration will need to be given to factors relating to crop configuration that will improve pour rates and efficiencies. This could inform changes to the mallee row arrangement to better suit commercial harvester and transport constraints. Harvester operation and production appears optimized if mallees are close together (
Vehicles used for infield haulout will need to be suitable for off-road use and have low ground pressures. Depending on the row configuration and if low stumps are left by the harvester, rubber tracks or low floatation tyres will need to be considered. Consideration could be given to pre-processing at roadside landings, involving upgrading processes such as chip separation, oil distillation, drying and even pellet manufacture. This would improve the marketing of the biomass, by placing the emphasis of the long-haul road transport upon the movement of specific value-added products to appropriate markets. However costs and efficiencies of the several options would need to be assessed. The need for and role of material stockpiles will need to be evaluated in terms of the supply chain management and impact on product quality. Stockpiles are a risk management strategy and can ensure continuous feedstock supply in case of interruptions (for example fire, flood, soft soils, and major mechanical breakdowns). The grain transport trailers that are common in the wheat belt regions do not have the volumetric capacity for biomass. The wood chip transport systems are geographically somewhat distant from mallee areas and they rely, partly for historical reasons, upon the use or rear discharge by tipping or walking floors. This requires that road trains be decoupled and reassembled for every load, which imposes extra cost upon woodchip transport compared grain transport, which can empty trucks through a grizzly screen. The mallee industry will have the opportunity to avoid this problem if it adopts side loading and unloading from the outset. If the materials handling process from the point of harvest is containerised, then side loading and unloading can be accommodated using the principles of sea container swing-lift technology. The nature of the biomass material to be delivered needs to be well defined to allow the most suitable transport system to be developed. Appropriate strategies will need to be developed for transport configurations such that the bulk density of material is not reduced. Existing and potential haulout and road transport systems have been reviewed but conceptual designs of the alternative new systems need to be developed and proper financial analysis conducted. Comparisons of existing and potential systems need to be thorough and systematic. A resource inventory of the existing mallee in Western Australia is essential for proper analysis of alternative transport systems and development of the early commercial operations. It will also assist in planning and guiding future expansion of the mallee resource so as to maximise transport efficiency. Products, processing and impacts on supply chain The development of a viable industry based on oil mallee cannot happen “overnight”, however analysis of the potential for downstream products to support a large scale industry is promising. The industry cannot, however, develop on the back of current products such as the boutique oil industry. The magnitude of the potential supply will overwhelm the current market. Extracted oil is seen as an important potential product, but as an industrial product, and as a strategy to value add the leaf material. At the projected prices, it is not a viable product in its own right. Similarly, a number of small-scale options exist which can offer very attractive markets for limited production quantities. Such markets include thermal energy for abattoirs and feedmilling, and the generation of electricity for use on-site. The former displaces LPG and diesel as heat sources, and the latter displaces local diesel fuelled systems, or perhaps when used on-site as an alternative to retail electricity purchased off the grid. When combined thermal plus electrical energy may be generated more efficiently from the biomass. Both these will remain as markets, but are limited in size. Significantly, technologies such as combined heat and power and the technology development to 176
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Sustainable Biomass Supply Chain fo
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Foreword This report provides an as
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include business development (new p
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Acknowledgments The authors would l
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4.1 Product Options and Supply Chai
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Table 4.2 Assessment of current val
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Figure 3.4 Tracked rigid self-prope
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Executive Summary What the report i
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• Biomass production potential of
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• As the Industry expands, the mo
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Harvesting, transport and storage s
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Biomass processing, supply chain pl
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Key barriers to biomass industries
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Crop-Biomass Production Production
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Figure 1.1 The cropping and pasture
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Table 1.1 Mallee species used for p
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1.1.4 Growth Cycle Mallee System Ma
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northern New South Wales (where it
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Almost 80% of the industry now cuts
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Bark has relatively high ash but as
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Carbon sinks Planting of mallees to
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Table 1.5(a) State Land area devote
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out the fluctuations in farm income
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Mallee system Most of the mallee bi
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inconclusive result may have been d
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For a sustainable woody crop indust
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changed significantly since they we
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Figure 2.2 Biosystems Engineering p
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Whole-of-crop harvesting represents
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During the last decade the harvesti
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single row, as this would improve t
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2.2.2.2 Weight Sugar System The Aus
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Table 2.1 Harvester Comparison Tabl
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The quality of cut may be less impo
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ate than a 170 tonne/ha crop of sta
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Dry Leaf 6.1 - 3.5 17.0 58.9 53.2 T
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Bulk density will be a key consider
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Table 2.4 EM levels in cane supply
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L/T L/T 60 0.97 0.71 80 0.92 0.66 1
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Total 7.5-26 16.5 Mallee System The
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• waiting for mill delivery of em
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perhaps at 10 - 20 km intervals. Th
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transport arrangements, harvest gro
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contractors and growers, and the fa
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experience of the sugar industry wi
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Table 2.11 Alternative harvest paym
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onto the harvester. BR+F still send
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Repairs and maintenance 2.10 Capita
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Figure 2.14 and Table 2.14 describe
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Sichter et al. (2005)), harvest and
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Transport efficiencies may be possi
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3. Transport and Storage Systems Tr
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same time, the potential problems o
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Figure 3.3 Articulated self-propell
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• The harvester will not have any
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Figure 3.7 Gross mass compared with
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external factors dramatically impac
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Figure 3.11 The effect of haulout t
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3.3 Road Transport 3.3.1 Configurat
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Figure 3.15 shows an example of the
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Road distance one way < 20 km 70 km
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Haul distance is largely outside th
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3.6 Recommendations The nature of t
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• The strategy offered lower tota
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sugarcane billets are such that wit
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• Transfer the whole tree product
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Figure 4.5(b) Energy balance of con
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2010). Table 4.2 presents a summary
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4.4.2 Activated charcoal Activated
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Nett Product Value ($/t) $475.00 $
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Table 4.9 presents an estimation of
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• Oil from leaf @ $2/kg • Synth
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• The mallee oil would be extract
Page 147 and 148: 5. Industry and Business Structures
Page 149 and 150: is conducted into tariff levels on
Page 151 and 152: Bx is % brix in first expressed jui
Page 153 and 154: Hildebrand (2002) estimated that th
Page 155 and 156: also has a flow on effect to the sp
Page 157 and 158: Sugar Industry Illustrative Example
Page 159 and 160: with super size multi-lift bins ove
Page 161 and 162: farmer vs. harvester) is the next l
Page 163 and 164: 6. Supply Chain Planning and Manage
Page 165 and 166: Figure 6.1 Building blocks of the s
Page 167 and 168: weighed against the costs of operat
Page 169 and 170: • There is close contact between
Page 171 and 172: 6.4 Planning, Management Tools and
Page 173 and 174: • Harvest and transport logistics
Page 175 and 176: interface. The system allows users
Page 177 and 178: Case Study 6.2 - Model Application
Page 179 and 180: Relationships between sectors and p
Page 181 and 182: 7. Supply Chain Modelling and Econo
Page 183 and 184: It was assumed that there was a fif
Page 185 and 186: Table 7.2 Scenario two capital equi
Page 187 and 188: Table 7.4 Fuel burn rates harvester
Page 189 and 190: Figure 7.5 Effect of capital equipm
Page 191 and 192: Figure 7.7 Effect of annual tonnes
Page 193 and 194: 30 1.8 7.0 12.3 17.5 50 1.1 4.3 7.6
Page 195 and 196: 8. Conclusions and Recommendations
Page 197: Biomass bulk density has a large im
Page 201 and 202: This can be compared with harvest a
Page 203 and 204: While diversification can add value
Page 205 and 206: Appendix 1: Comparative Assessment
Page 207 and 208: and transport conditions. Billet le
Page 209 and 210: that cane production is the most pr
Page 211 and 212: on sugar only, other proceeds (mola
Page 213 and 214: References Agnew, J 2002. A Partici
Page 215 and 216: Enecon 2001. Integrated Tree Proces
Page 217 and 218: Keating, BA, Antony, G, Brennan, LE
Page 219 and 220: Ridge, DR and Linedale, AL, 1997. T
Page 221: Willcox, T, Hussey, B, Chapple, D a
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