For biomass utilization, pretreatment such as transportation from plantation site, crushing (tipping), and drying are required.

Although each conversion technology requires particular chip size and moisture content of biomass, Table 6.2.5 shows an example (transportation energy, crushing energy, and drying energy). To calculate the transportation energy, it was assumed that 5 t-dry biomass was transported by the track whose maximum load is 20 t and fuel mileage is 3 km/L. The crushing energy was obtained from the reference. Drying energy was calculated, assuming that biomass is dried till water content becomes 20% from 50%, considering approximately 20% heat loss in addition to the evaporation heat.

When transportation distance is 30 km, preprocessing energy is 75 MJ/t-dry (3.6%) for transportation, 0.786 MJ/t-dry (0.037%) for milling and 2,032 MJ/t-dry (96.4%) for drying respectively. This shows that energy consumption in transportation stage is relatively small on this assumption. Energy consumption in drying stage would be reduced by natural drying or drying with waste heat.