What equipment is available and what changes could be made to improve its effectiveness?

A team of researchers from the University of California tackled this issue during the 2010 Council of Forest Engineering (COFE) 33rd Annual Meeting. The title of the paper was “Potential Improvements to Equipment and Processes for Harvesting Forest Biomass for Energy”. Hundreds of documents on biomass harvesting operations and equipment were examined. This included information from manufacturers and published and unpublished studies.

Existing equipment was evaluated according to its functions of gathering, processing or transporting biomass. A useful table categorised the existing equipment according to the primary harvesting activity, and all associated harvesting activities and functions.

A conceptual evaluation of equipment and systems followed. Elements of systems were examined, with the factors that resulted in low costs per dry ton having been identified. These factors were:
 

• Low initial capital costs
• Long equipment life (in productive hours)
• High utilisation rate
• High scheduled time per year
• Low maintenance and repair fraction
• Small crew size
• Large cycle weight
• Short cycle time

A description was given of what would be required to improve each of the above factors. Examples were given for each of the basic functions (gathering, processing or transporting). The factors that limit machine productivity were also investigated (e.g. power, tree diameter, weight capacity and volume capacity). An evaluation procedure was then followed that compared equipment that carried out similar activities. Design principles were identified for improvements to systems. The paper then described the design changes that could be applied to different machines to enable improvements, and attempted to quantify the effects of the improvements. New possibilities were also indicated, such as autonomous and multi-function equipment. The paper concluded with the key areas that need to be overcome, as well as possible methods of addressing these problems.

The researchers were Bruce Hartsough, Peter Dempster, Nicholas Gallo, Bryan Jenkins and Peter Tittman. Please access the paper for a more complete account of the research.

Source: http://www.forestry.vt.edu/cofe/documents/2010/Hartsough_COFE%20CDF%20Paper%2016May10.pdf