Supporting Data

The Biomass Energy Data Book is a statistical compendium prepared and published by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) under contract with the Biomass Program in the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) program of the Department of Energy (DOE). Designed for use as a convenient reference, the book represents an assembly and display of statistics and information that characterize the biomass industry, from the production of biomass feedstocks to their end use, including discussions on sustainability.

This is the fourth edition of the Biomass Energy Data Book which is only available online in electronic format. There are five main sections to this book. The first section is an introduction which provides an overview of biomass resources and consumption. Following the introduction to biomass, is a section on biofuels which covers ethanol, biodiesel and bio-oil. The biopower section focuses on the use of biomass for electrical power generation and heating. The fourth section is on the developing area of biorefineries, and the fifth section covers feedstocks that are produced and used in the biomass industry. The sources used represent the latest available data. There are also four appendices which include frequently needed conversion factors, a table of selected biomass feedstock characteristics, and discussions on sustainability. A glossary of terms and a list of acronyms are also included for the reader's convenience.

Waste to Energy System Simulation Model (WESyS) - Scenario Inputs and Supplemental Tableau Workbook
Daniel Inman, Ethan Warner, Anelia Milbrandt, Alberta Carpenter, Ling Tao, Emily Newes, and Steve Peterson (Lexidyne, LLC)

Abstract
Conversion of biogas from organic waste materials to usable energy (electricity, compressed natural gas [CNG], pipeline-quality natural gas [PQNG], and biofuel) has received attention because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency categorized biogas-derived energy as a cellulosic biofuel in 2014, making it eligible to collect renewable identification number credits under this designation. NREL developed the Waste-to-Energy System Simulation model to help understand the development of the waste-to-energy system. The objective of this study is to identify barriers to energy production from waste materials, provide insights on the role of policy for this market, and identify data/modeling gaps in the existing modeling and data structure. This study is focused on biogas resources derived from landfills and from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) at a national level. Our results suggest that collection and conversion of biogas to energy from landfills and CAFOs has the potential to generate as much as 400 million giga joules (GJ) annually, with the largest energy potential from swine CAFOs. This study highlights the impact of system levers: such as the time delay between deciding to invest and having a completed facility and operating costs.

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The Federal Activities Report on the Bioeconomy has been prepared to emphasize the significant potential for an even stronger U.S. bioeconomy through the production and use of biofuels, bioproducts, and biopower. Bioeconomy activities have already touched on the interests of many federal agencies and offices. This report is intended to educate the public on the wide-ranging, federally funded activities that are helping to bolster the bioeconomy. Further, the report will highlight some of the critical work currently being conducted across the federal government that either supports or relates to the bioeconomy.

The federal government as a whole sees great potential in the nation’s abundant natural resources, the capacity for new and advanced technologies, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people. This potential offers the ability to triple the size of today’s bioeconomy by 2030—to over a billion tons of biomass. Through the Biomass Research and Development Board (Board), a new effort is being launched to fully develop this Billion Ton Bioeconomy.

The Board is already working to coordinate research and development federal activities concerning the biobased fuels, products, and power that are key pillars in the bioeconomy. The Board includes members from the Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. With leadership across the administration, the Billion Ton Bioeconomy vision could grow the entire bioeconomy supply chain—through feedstock development and production, technology development, conversion, production of renewable chemicals and other biobased products, and marketing and distribution to alternative end use.

Expanding the bioeconomy in a sustainable manner will increase energy diversity and long-term security. It will provide additional economic, environmental, and social benefits, such as reduced greenhouse gas emissions, job growth, and responsible management of diverse sources of biomass and waste materials. Efforts will result in a greener, stronger nation with diverse, new economic sectors that enhance U.S. competitiveness.

Inside the report you will find:

• An overview of the Billion Ton Bioeconomy Vision
• Preliminary analyses of the expected benefits of a Billion Ton Bioeconomy
• A compendium of federal activities that currently support the bioeconomy
• Details on interagency activities that aim to grow the bioeconomy

The Path Forward:

As the United States continues to develop a diverse energy portfolio and transitions to a renewable, clean energy future, the federal government leads the way by working with academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations to provide the science, technology, and policy support to accelerate the deployment of new manufacturing facilities employing innovative processes and using biomass as a feedstock.

Fulfilling this vision will entail aligning the diverse goals, roles, science, technology, data, and tools of many stakeholders across both the public and private sectors for coordinated action that will lead to industrial innovation, increased manufacturing capability, new infrastructure, improvement in agriculture and forest productivity, management and output quality, and green workforce development.

The Board will continue to coordinate and enhance federal efforts—as well as garner collaboration from the government and its stakeholders—in a systematic effort to expand the sustainable production and use of biomass. To further understand the potential of the national bioeconomy, the Board will also be hosting a series of workshops and webinars aimed at gathering input from the public on numerous topics.

Find out more about this exciting new effort by checking out the release on biomassboard.gov.

Abstract: Cellulosic-based biofuels are needed to help meet energy needs and to strengthen rural investment and development in the midwestern United States (US). This analysis identifies 11 categories of indicators to measure progress toward sustainability that should be monitored to determine if ecosystem and social services are being maintained, enhanced, or disrupted by production, harvest, storage, and transport of cellulosic feedstock. The indicator categories are identified using scientific literature, input from two stakeholder meetings, and response information from targeted surveys. Five of the categories focus on environmental concerns (soil quality, water quality and quantity, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, and productivity), and six focus on socioeconomic categories (social well-being, energy security, external trade, profitability, resource conservation, and social acceptability). We hypothesize that by measuring these indicators, it will be feasible to quantify changes in ecosystem and social services related to provisioning (e.g., energy, nutrition and materials), cultural, regulating, and supporting services such as optimum soil water and nutrient balances, remediation of wastes, toxins, or other nuisance compounds, and continuation of physical, biological and chemical conditions. To advance our hypothesis from conceptual to real-world sustainability assessments, the next step will be to work with a team of stakeholders and researchers to implement a Landscape Design Project entitled “Enabling Sustainable Landscape Design for Continual Improvement of Operating Bioenergy Supply Systems.” The desired outcome is to identify a science-based approach so that progress toward sustainability can be assessed and useful management practices can be identified.

Nitrogen (N) is an important nutrient as it often limits productivity, but in excess can impair water quality. Most studies on watershed N cycling have occurred in upland forested catchments where snowmelt dominates N export; fewer studies have focused on low-relief watersheds that lack snow. We examined watershed N cycling in three adjacent, low-relief watersheds in the Upper Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States to better understand the role of hydrological flowpaths and biological transformations of N at the watershed scale. Groundwater was the dominant source of nitrified N to stream water in 2 of the 3 watersheds, while atmospheric deposition comprised 28% of stream water nitrate in one watershed. The greater atmospheric contribution may have been due to the larger stream channel area relative to total watershed area or the dominance of shallow subsurface flowpaths contributing to stream flow in this watershed. There was a positive relationship between temperature and stream water ammonium concentrations and a negative relationship between temperature and stream water nitrate concentrations in each watershed suggesting that N cycling processes (i.e., nitrification, denitrification) varied seasonally. However, there were no clear patterns in the importance of denitrification in different water pools possibly because a variety of factors (i.e., assimilatory uptake, dissimilatory uptake, mixing) affected nitrate concentrations. Together, these results highlight the hydrological and biological controls on N cycling in low-gradient watersheds, and variability in N delivery flowpaths among adjacent watersheds with similar physical characteristics.

This dataset reports the pre-treatment hydrology and pre- and post-treatment water quality data from a watershed-scale experiment that is evaluating the effects of growing short-rotation loblolly pine for bioenergy on water quality and quantity in the southeastern U.S. The experiment is taking place on the Savannah River Site, near New Ellenton, South Carolina, USA.  Beginning in 2010, water quality and hydrology were measured for two years in 3 watersheds (R, B, C). At the end of February 2012, 40% of two treatment watersheds (B, C) were harvested and loblolly pine seedlings were planted and managed for bioenergy (including multiple applications of herbicides and fertilizers). Water samples were collected from stream water (weekly), riparian groundwater (monthly), groundwater beneath the uplands (monthly), throughfall (weekly), and trenches that collected shallow subsurface flow (during storms), and these data are available for the pre- and post-treatment periods. Water samples were also collected from three concentrated flow tracks that formed in watersheds B and C in the post-treatment period. Water samples were analyzed for nitrate-N, ammonium-N, soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations. Stream water samples only were analyzed for total nitrogen and total phosphorus concentrations, and select samples (usually collected seasonally) were analyzed for pesticide concentrations. Water samples were also analyzed for stable isotopes of nitrate (δ15N, δ18O), and these data are available for the pre-treatment period. Stream flow and trench flow were measured every 10-15 minutes, and these data are available for the pre-treatment period.

The pre-treatment data were presented in a manuscript (Griffiths et al. 2016) that utilized stable isotope of nitrate data to describe hydrological and biological drivers of watershed N cycling and sources of stream water nitrate in the 3 study watersheds. Both the pre-treatment and post-treatment water quality data were presented in a manuscript (Griffiths et al. 2017) that examined the water quality responses to short-rotation pine production for bioenergy.

Griffiths, N.A., C.R. Jackson, J.J. McDonnell, J. Klaus, E. Du, and M.M. Bitew. 2016. Dual nitrate isotopes clarify the role of biological processing and hydrologic flowpaths on nitrogen cycling in subtropical low-gradient watersheds. JGR-Biogeosciences 131:422-437.

Griffiths, N.A., C.R. Jackson, M.M. Bitew, A.M. Fortner, K.L. Fouts, K. McCracken, and J.R. Phillips. 2017. Water quality effects of short-rotation pine management for bioenergy feedstocks in the southeastern United States. Forest Ecology and Management 400:181-198.

Acknowledgements: This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Bioenergy Technologies Office. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US Department of Energy under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.

The paper describes an approach to landscape design that focuses on integrating bioenergy production with their components of environmental, social and economic systems. Landscape design as used here refers to a spatially explicit, collaborative plan for management of landscapes and supply chains. Landscape design can involve multiple scales and build on existing practices to reduce costs or enhance services. Appropriately applied to a specific context, landscape design can help people assess trade-offs when making choices about locations, types of feedstock, transport, refining and distribution of bioenergy products and services. The approach includes performance monitoring and reporting along the bioenergy supply chain. Examples of landscape design applied to bioenergy production systems are presented. Barriers to implementation of landscape design include high costs ,the need to consider diverse land-management objectives from a wide array of stakeholders, up-front planning requirements, and the complexity and level of effort needed for successful stakeholder involvement. A landscape design process maybe stymied by insufficient data or participation. An impetus for coordination is critical, and incentives may be required to engage landowners and the private sector. Hence devising and implementing landscape designs for more sustainable outcomes require clear communication of environmental, social, and economic opportunities and concerns.</p>

A new approach to hydrogen production using an integrated pyrolysis–microbial electrolysis process is described. The aqueous stream generated during pyrolysis of switchgrass was used as a substrate for hydrogen production in a microbial electrolysis cell, achieving a maximum hydrogen production rate of 4.3 L H2/L anode-day at a loading of 10 g COD/L-anode-day. Hydrogen yields ranged from 50 ± 3.2% to 76 ± 0.5% while anode Coulombic efficiency ranged from 54 ± 6.5% to 96 ± 0.21%, respectively. Significant conversion of furfural, organic acids and phenolic molecules was observed under both batch and continuous conditions. The electrical and overall energy efficiency ranged from 149–175% and 48–63%, respectively. The results demonstrate the potential of the pyrolysis–microbial electrolysis process as a sustainable and efficient route for production of renewable hydrogen with significant implications for hydrocarbon production from biomass.

We attempted to reconcile three microbial maintenance models (Herbert, Pirt, and Compromise) through a theoretical reassessment. We provided a rigorous proof that the true growth yield coefficient (YG) is the ratio of the specific maintenance rate (a in Herbert) to the maintenance coefficient (m in Pirt). Other findings from this study include: (1) the Compromise model is identical to the Herbert for computing microbial growth and substrate consumption, but it expresses the dependence of maintenance on both microbial biomass and substrate; (2) the maximum specific growth rate in the Herbert (lmax,H) is higher than those in the other two models (lmax,P and lmax,C), and the difference is the physiological maintenance factor (mq = a); and (3) the overall maintenance coefficient (mT) is more sensitive to mq than to the specific growth rate (lG) and YG. Our critical reassessment of microbial maintenance provides a new approach for quantifying some important components in soil microbial ecology models.

While soil enzymes have been explicitly included in the soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition models, there is a serious lack of suitable data for model parameterization. This study provides well-documented enzymatic parameters for application in enzyme-driven SOC decomposition models from a compilation and analysis of published measurements. In particular, we developed appropriate kinetic parameters for five typical ligninolytic and cellulolytic enzymes (b-glucosidase, cellobiohydrolase, endo-glucanase, peroxidase, and phenol oxidase). The kinetic parameters included the maximum specific enzyme activity (Vmax) and half-saturation constant (Km) in the MichaeliseMenten equation. The activation energy (Ea) and the pH optimum and sensitivity (pHopt and pHsen) were also analyzed. pHsen was estimated by fitting an exponential-quadratic function. The Vmax values, often presented in different units under various measurement conditions, were converted into the same units at a reference temperature (20
C) and pHopt. Major conclusions are: (i) Both Vmax and Km were log-normal distributed, with no significant difference in Vmax exhibited between enzymes originating from bacteria or fungi. (ii) No significant difference in Vmax was found between cellulases and ligninases; however, there was significant difference in Km between them. (iii) Ligninases had higher Ea values and lower pHopt than cellulases; average ratio of pHsen to pHopt ranged 0.3e0.4 for the five enzymes, which means that an increase or decrease of 1.1e1.7 pH units from pHopt would reduce Vmax by 50%. (iv) Our analysis indicated that the Vmax values from lab measurements with purified enzymes were 1e2 orders of magnitude higher than those for use in SOC decomposition models under field conditions.