storage of the biomass for a significant time period, as they may
want to prepare the land for the next crop [11].
Several authors consider the use of intermediate storage
locations between the fields and the power plant [5,14,15]. For
all biomass fuels in which the use of intermediate storage has
been modelled, the fuel has to be transported twice by road
transport vehicles (first from farm/forest to the intermediate
storage facility and then from storage to the power station). This
fact will result in a higher delivered cost than a system in which
there is only one road transport movement (directly from farm/
forest to power station). Using an intermediate storage stage
may add in the region of 10–20% to the delivered costs, as a
result of the additional transportation and handling costs
incurred [5].
Finally, the option of settling the storage facility next to the
biomass power plant has also been examined in the relevant
literature [15,16]. On the latter case, an innovative storage
layout with biomass drying capability using dumped heat from
the power plant was presented. This concept aims at reducing
faster the biomass moisture content and prevents material
decomposition as well as fungus and spores formation. Using
storage facilities attached to the power plant is the only viable
case of accelerating the drying process of the biomass, as
dumped heat may be used without need for extra energy
consumption.
It is obvious that the biomass supply chain literature has not
paid to the issue of biomass storage the attention it deserves. In
most cases the lowest possible cost solution is adopted, without
examining the effect this solution may have on the total system
cost. This work aims at comparing three biomass storage
solutions found in the literature, in terms of total system cost.
The concept of multi-biomass is also adopted in its simplest
form: two locally available biomass types are considered, as
this concept may lead to significant system cost reduction [14].
The analysis is performed by examining a case study, in order to
come up with some tangible results.