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Scientists at ORNL, in collaboration with their research partners in private and public institutions, have been engaged in developing and applying analysis tools in support of biomass feedstock development and supply systems for the past 15 years. The feedstock forecasts and analyses are designed to facilitate biorefinery development strategies, to support life cycle analyses of bioenergy and bioproducts, to support policy studies and policy development, and to respond to DOE's need to provide reliable estimates of energy feedstocks. To provide forecasts and credible analyses of feedstock supply issues, ORNL has developed a set of integrated modeling tools (ORIBAS, POLYSYS, and BIOCOST) and databases (ORRECL) for estimating current sustainable feedstock supplies and for forecasting supplies from new resources such as energy crops. These modeling tools account for economic, geographic, and environmental constraints in assessing the availability of biomass wastes, agricultural residues, and potential energy crops. Biomass resource estimates are sensitive to environmental and soil conservation issues, the scale of the processing facility, and the economics of farming. The models can be applied to provide estimates of the impacts of different development and policy scenarios on the cost and availability of biorefinery feedstocks.
Recently, ORNL, in concert with NREL and Kansas State University, developed a soils and crop management based approach for estimating sustainable removal of crop residues and used that approach to estimate current and future potential agricultural residue supplies from all important corn and wheat soils in the United States.
For Further Reading
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