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Woody Biomass Power Generation and Sustainable Energy Development

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2022) | Viewed by 2230

Special Issue Editor

Department of Social Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI 49931–1295, USA
Interests: biofuels; nuclear power; renewable energy policy; waste management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

While most assessments of a sustainable, clean energy future predict that the vast majority of the new energy demand would be met by solar and wind power technologies, woody biomass fuels can also play a modest, supporting role. However, questions remain about the sustainability of forest-based biomass energy harvesting and utilization, including the generally low energy content, inefficient conversion rate, and high carbon dioxide emissions from combustion (10–35% more carbon emissions per unit of power than coal). These emissions can be offset by sustainable land use practices, including reforestation and afforestation programs or offsets. In such cases, rigorous verification of carbon sequestration is essential to confirm claims of sustainability or carbon neutrality. Moreover, due to the high weight (and thus large transportation costs) of the feedstock, the use of woody fuel for power generation is generally limited to heavily forested areas and at industrial sites such as lumber, pulp, and paper mills. In addition to whole tree harvests, energy consumption from woody biomass can include wood waste in the form of bark, sawdust, wood chips, wood scrap, and mill residues.

This Special Issue will report recent research results on the sustainability of woody biomass use for power generation around the world. Among the topics that could be addressed by potential authors are the following: more efficient technologies for biomass power generation; cofiring and cogeneration systems with biomass power; advances in the debate over the carbon neutrality of biofuels; life cycle analyses; strengthened verification systems for carbon dioxide offsets of woody biomass emissions; the impact of woody biomass feedstock production on forest and ecosystem health; the ecological impacts of whole-tree harvesting to produce wood chips; the sustainability of wood pellet production for export markets; and public opinion on biomass power generation. This Special Issue will build upon the existing literature to enrich the debate about the sustainable development of woody biomass resources for electric power generation.

Prof. emer. Dr. Barry D. Solomon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biopower
  • carbon emissions from biopower
  • carbon footprint
  • forestry offsets
  • life cycle analysis
  • sustainable biopower
  • wood fuel from forests

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

21 pages, 2867 KiB  
Article
A Stochastic Optimization Model for Sustainable Multimodal Transportation for Bioenergy Production
by Sangpil Ko, Kyoungjoon Choi, Seungmin Yu and Jun Lee
Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1889; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14031889 - 07 Feb 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1219
Abstract
While many previous studies have suggested well-defined procedures to find appropriate supply chains, a limited number of studies have been conducted with uncertain values relating to transportation costs. Most of these have included only limited detail on multimodal transportation, or have not considered [...] Read more.
While many previous studies have suggested well-defined procedures to find appropriate supply chains, a limited number of studies have been conducted with uncertain values relating to transportation costs. Most of these have included only limited detail on multimodal transportation, or have not considered economic, social, and environmental transportation cost factors together. The main purpose of this study is to suggest a multi-objective stochastic model for sustainable biomass transportation, and to identify the impact level of model selection on the transportation mode. It begins with a deterministic formulation of sustainable transportation, which is then modified to a stochastic problem with vectorization of cost parameters. Based on the model developed, we examined four uncertainty cases from a combination of annual capacity and average distance of biomass transportation. The experimental results provide more cost savings from multimodal transportation, which can be identified if we analyze transportation costs with stochastic modeling. Regarding short-distance plant cases, the study reveals that the impact of the utilization of stochastic methods is insignificant, as the costs savings from multimodal transportation is trivial. Other findings from the experiments show that multimodal transportation could provide cost savings in the economic cost factor, except in the case of low annual capacity and short average distance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Woody Biomass Power Generation and Sustainable Energy Development)
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