ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

Abstract. Long term storage of biomass for renewable energy production presents a number of issues to feedstock logistics systems. The effects of microbially induced self-heating and degradation of biomass in storage are not well understood, preventing storage practices from being optimized. Field scale storage research is fraught with difficulty due to uncontrollable environmental conditions, the mass of material being monitored, and the high cost of obtaining and analyzing a sufficient number of samples. This work describes a laboratory scale reactor for simulating aerobic storage of biomass. Using high-moisture corn stover and pine chips, the results of this research show successful replication of biomass self-heating with storage performance monitoring at a resolution unattainable in field scale experiments. Dry matter loss throughout storage was monitored in near real-time by tracking microbial respiration. This reactor system greatly expands the range of feasible laboratory scale experiments for understanding the impacts of storage on biomass quality.