Is the pipeline hydro-transport of wheat straw and corn stover to a biorefinery realistic?

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Vaezi, Mahdi
  • Nimana, Balwinder S.
  • Kumar, Amit

• Pipeline hydro-transport is an alternative to truck delivery of agricultural residue (lignocellulosic) biomass. Pipeline hydro-transport benefits from the economies of scale, reduces total delivery costs, and enables bio-based energy facilities to achieve higher capacities. In this study, the empirical correlation based on experimentally developed data for pipeline transport of agricultural residue-water mixtures (slurry) was used to develop a data-intensive techno-economic model to estimate the cost of pipeline hydro-transport of wheat straw and corn stover to a bio-ethanol refinery. The total cost of pipeline hydro-transport was found to be lowest at 8.8% dry matter slurry solid mass content and 2.5 m s-1 slurry velocity. At this biomass slurry solid mass content and velocity, the pipeline hydro-transport of biomass was found to be economically more viable than truck delivery at capacities of 0.45 M dry t yr-1 or more for a one-way pipeline and 1.4 M dry t yr-1 or more for a two-way pipeline (with the return of the carrier liquid . The ability to economically hydro-transport agricultural residue biomass in pipes offers the opportunity to develop large-scale bio-ethanol plants.

• Date created

  2015-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Pipeline Hydro-Transport
  • Truck Delivery
  • Economies Of Scale
  • Agricultural Residue Biomass
  • Bio-Ethanol Production

• Type of Item

  Article (Draft / Submitted)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-2vyy-nn28

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International