It is technologically possible for a biorefinery to use a variety of biomass as feedstock including native
perennial grasses (e.g., switchgrass) and agricultural residues (e.g., corn stalk and wheat straw). Incorporating
the distinct characteristics of various types of biomass feedstocks and taking into account their
interaction in supplying the bioenergy production, this paper proposed a multi-commodity network flow
model to design the logistics system for a multiple-feedstock biomass-to-bioenergy industry. The model
was formulated as a mixed integer linear programming, determining the locations of warehouses, the
size of harvesting team, the types and amounts of biomass harvested/purchased, stored, and processed
in each month, the transportation of biomass in the system, and so on. This paper demonstrated the
advantages of using multiple types of biomass feedstocks by comparing with the case of using a single
feedstock (switchgrass) and analyzed the relationship of the supply capacity of biomass feedstocks to
the output and cost of biofuel.