If you are an ASABE member or if your employer has arranged for access to the full-text, click the underlined title below to view.

Don't have access to the full text? Click here for options.

A major constraint on the wider commercial utilization of biomass feedstocks is the dispersed, diverse and low density nature of crop biomass. For low specific costs, improved or alternative methods are needed to collect, handle, and store biomass such as corn stover. So far, corn stover collection has depended on baling, initially with small rectangular balers, then with large round balers. But round-baling of corn stover can be a two- or three-pass operation. Another approach is to hitch a baler directly onto a combine, capture the crop effluent and square-bale it. The problem is that there is a strict limit in stover moisture if bales are to be stored. Balers that are not hitched to the combine pick up dirt and most of the cobs are left in the field. Several alternative technologies were proposed, developed and successfully demonstrated for a lower cost single-pass system capable of suitable densification for economical transport.

The initial work was supported largely by a DOE grant, DE-FC36-OOGO10695, Handling and Densification for Commercial Processing of Biomass Feedstock.

The new corn stover harvest systems should be capable of harvesting stover at any level of moisture even while the grain is being harvested. All the cobs are collected, the stover does not touch the ground and a controlled amount of residue can be left to meet any conservation requirements. Several approaches were addressed and the equipment described here was (a) and (b) Two-tier Heads; (c) a Stover Caddy, that can be used in conjunction with either an unmodified corn head to collect the combine effluent or with (d) a modified Whole Plant Harvesting Head. Collection was facilitated with a modified Stakhand Stover Wagon, (e) a purpose-built Stover wagon with some hydraulic compaction capability and moving floor was fabricated and matched to a Fastrac Tractor. Costs of an On-time harvest were estimated to be as low as $3.76 per ton of stover. Or if the harvest is slowed by the stover collection, the costs per ton was estimated to be $4.36 for the delayed harvest. These figures compare most favorably with baling after the grain harvest.