Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Unit costs for energy production in bioenergy facilities are dependent upon both fixed cost for facility construction and operational costs including biomass feedstock supply. With the increase of capacity, unit fixed cost could be decreased while supply cost tends to increase due to the longer transportation distance. It is desirable to take into account biomass availability in planning bioenergy facilities. A cumulative curve relationship was proposed to relate biomass availability and cumulative products of biomass amount and transportation distance. Optimum size of gasification facilities was affected by collection cost, biomass cumulative relationship. Based on biomass availability of Icheon-City, optimum sizes were about 400kWth for gas production, and about 200kWel for power generation. Unit cost of bioenergy production could be substantially reduced by reducing collection cost through supplying biomass from diverse sources including land development areas where significant amount of waste wood is generated. When planning bioenergy facilities, however, biomass availability and spatial distribution are key factors in determining the size of capacity.