Systems Informatics and Analysis for Biomass Feedstock Production and Provision

Luis Rodriguez - Associate Professor, Department of Agricultural & Biological Engineering and Research Asst. Professor, Information Trust Institute, both at University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign Biomass-based biofuels are perhaps the most promising renewable fuel under consideration. The Renewable Fuels Mandate has created incentives for development of new supply chains for production of biofuels; to meet the mandate, delivery of more than 200 million Mg of biomass must occur annually. In our current studies, we have a unique opportunity to directly link systems informatics, modeling, and analysis with technology development. Successful integration of these tasks has the potential not only to facilitate establishment of a biomass-to-bioenergy economy, but also to identify key limiting factors in the supply chain that can be addressed through focused, mission oriented, technology development. Few investigators have the opportunity to tightly integrate modeling and analysis with technology development; we believe our group has identified and addressed key limiting factors in biomass feedstock provision including centralized storage, common feedstocks, preprocessing, weather effects, market dynamics, and logistics. This work is facilitated through integrated systems informatics, managing feedstock production data, integrated with modeling and analysis tools, which is delivered through the development of decision support systems' examples of each of these were presented.Ope