Assessment of biomass resources for an integrated biomass logistics center (IBLC) operating in the olive oil sector

An IBLC (Integrated Biomass Logistic Centre) is defined as a business strategy for agro-industries to take advantage of unexploited synergies in terms of facilities, equipment and staff capacities, to diversify regular activity both on the input (biomass feedstock) and output side (biocommodities & intermediate biobased feedstocks) thereby enhancing the strength of agro-industries and increasing the added value delivered by those companies. For the olive oil sector, pomace mills are the main agro-industries that can be targeted for the implementation of an IBLC concept, since they are of sufficient large size and sophistication, they have equipment (e.g. dryers) capable of handling biomass streams, they have large idle time of inactivity and, finally, they are located in areas with large untapped biomass potential from the agricultural sector, e.g. olive tree prunings. The aim of the present paper is to assess the biomass resources that can be mobilized by an IBLC operating in the olive oil sector in Central Greece. Two main input streams are considered: wet olive pomace, which is the standard incoming stream in a pomace mill, and olive tree prunings, which are the untapped local biomass potential. The outcome of the present paper is an increased understanding of the biomass resources that an olive oil sector IBLC can mobilize. This knowledge can be used to produce updated mass balances of an operating IBLC and to estimate the new revenue streams and economic opportunities that can be emerged by an olive oil IBLC. Moreover, the methodology developed in the paper to assess the biomass resources can be employed by other agro-industries, operating in the olive oil sector, in order to assess their possibilities for implementing the IBLC strategy