Increasing Biomass Collection Efficiency by Responding to In-Field Variability

1 Increasing Biomass Collection Efficiency by Responding to In-Field Variability 

Collection efficiency (the ratio of biomass colleeted to the total amount available in the field) ranked second in sensitivity, fifth in uncertainty, seeond in influence, and highest in overall combined ranking. The probability distribution for collection efficiency used in this analysis was based on a review of reported com stover collection efficiencies (Richey et al., 1982 Shinners et al., 2003 Schechninger and Hettenhaus, 2004 Shinners and Binversie, 2004 Prewitt et al., 2007) from which we chose a most likely value of 43%, a minimum of 19%, and a maximum of 65%. The wide range of reported results show that current machinery itself is capable of high removal 

FIGURE 2.7 Sustainable subfield residue harvest plan that varies the removal rate between 

It has generally been reported that corn stover removal rates of 30-40% could be sustainable over most corn acres (Nelson et al., 2004 Gregg and Izaurralde, 2010, Perlack et al., 2011). However, corn stover removal at a rate of 30-40% is often not economically viable. The emerging biorefining industry has estimated minimum removal rates of two dry short tons (DST) per acre for system economics to support corn stover removal operations. 

Our own testing has shown that removal rates as high as 80% are attainable with wheel rake, flail shredder, or bar rake windrowers however, increasing corn stover collection efficiencies with conventional harvest systems tends to reduce stover 

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