The Cost to Deliver Switchgrass to a Biorefinery : A Case Study for Oklahoma

The purpose of this study was to determine the cost to deliver a flow of feedstock to a biorefinery for producing ethanol located in Oklahoma. A mixed integer mathematical programming model was used to determine the optimal biorefinery location, the quantity of biomass feedstock, optimal number of mowing and raking-baling-stacking harvest machines, and the cost to deliver feedstock to a biorefinery. The optimal number of harvest units was 48 for mowing and 20 for raking-baling-stacking, which requires an average investmentin harvest machines of $11.2 million for a 2,000 dry tons per day biorefinery. The estimated cost to deliver feedstock was $49.7 per ton and harvest cost was $17.0.