Title

Europruning: Development and implementation of a new, and non existent, logistic chain on biomass from pruning.

Programme

2. 2012.1.2-01 Development of new or improved logistics for lignocellulosic biomass harvest, storage and transport

Grant agreement

No. 312078

Funding body

European Union

Contract

Duration

4

Period

2012 - 2016

Web link

http://www.europruning.eu/

Planned activities

Agricultural residues could represent a good source of biomass to convert into energy in particular wherever it is impractical to convert cropland to energy crop cultivation . According to FAO’s reportage (1997) , large quantities of ligneous biomass can be obtained from pruning operations carried out in Mediterranean fruit plantations. Agricultural residues therefore play an important role in any analysis of biomass availability for a specific area. For this reason it is important to conduct a thorough study of the types of permanent crops in Europe and the potential of biomass obtained by its pruning. Nowadays these types of residues are just taken apart from the field and used locally, “Leaving on the ground” a potential profitable business for farmers, logistic companies and final users. Nowadays the pruning are just a cost for the farmers, but with a new implemented logistic chain they could take advantage in order to sell this product in the biomass market and providing a new business model for logistic operators, biomass sellers and final users, which could find a bigger amount of resources and a decreasing of the costs. It already exists and implemented and developed logistic chain for straw residues, but not for pruning.

The overall objective of the project is to develop and demonstrate a, non existent, new logistic chain for the biomass from pruning residues. The logistic chain includes the harvesting methods, the transport and the storage of the biomass, along all the chain the quality of the biomass, the cost effectiveness of the processes and the environmental concerns will be taking into account.

CRA-ING will be involved in the design, development and building of new prototypes for a sustainable large or little scale feasible wood pruning logistics. In particular:

• Evaluate the current harvesting and pruning methods according to the biomass quality analysis.
• Design and build a modular prototype able to harvest and chip the prunings, according to the transport

distance and needs of the final user, which has the optimal characteristics to work in a perennial crop field.

• Design and build a prototype for baling prunings.