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Title
Availability of wood biomass for biorefining
Authors
Antti Asikainen
Received
December 10, 2009
Published
Volume 44 Issue 4-6 April-June
Keywords
biorefining, biomass resources, woody biomass
Abstract
Biorefining is an emerging industry that will use increasing volumes of biomass as a raw material. This paper presents the estimates of global forest biomass resources for biorefining, based on the available global forest statistics and literature. The focus is on the large-scale production facilities, such as liquid biofuel production. The raw material sources were divided into three categories, namely, reallocation of current raw material flows to biorefining, mobilization of the existing biomass resources not utilized today, and boosting of biomass production, particularly in plantation forests. By the year 2020, the potential of woody biomass for biorefining will amount to 780 million m3 (327 dry tonnes) annually, corresponding to 147.5 million tonnes of oil in terms of energy content. Assuming that 50% of the energy content of the feedstock can be recovered as liquid biofuel, 73.8 million tonnes (3.1 EJ) of liquid biofuels could be produced, which will represent, in the year 2020, 2.6% of the global forecasted transportation fuel consumption (117 EJ).
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