The inbound logistics and handling of feedstocks at the plant gate is one of the important logistics operations in biomass utilization for food, feed, fuel, and bioproducts. Fuel produc­tion or power plants using biomass feedstocks need to have enough inventory to ensure at least 10 days of production, and supply needs to be such that this inventory level is always maintained at the plant gate. Inventory can result in significant costs and operating inefficien­cies (Dilworth 1992) and thus careful planning at the production plant must be made to secure the required weekly inventory year round. This planning will include an evaluation of the feedstock material flow layout for receiving operations, storage space, and inventory manage­ment to ensure that the quality of stored feedstock is maintained until consumed. Fire hazard prevention is especially important for highly combustible and reactive feedstocks like plant biomass.

The current biorefineries using grains for the production of fuel ethanol were designed to receive the majority of their feedstocks by trucks. Unlike for some other manufacturing operations, feedstocks to be delivered to a processing plant come from hundreds of producers in a region having different travel distances to the plant. The inbound logistics (material flow) of feedstocks delivered at the plant gate should be coordinated such that delivery trucks are able to spend the minimum amount of time waiting to process and off-load their cargo. This will prevent having long lines of waiting trucks at the plant waiting to off-load. Traffic con­gestion by waiting trucks can pose traffic hazard and also make communities antagonistic to having biorefineries or similar operations in their communities. For example, a 110 million gallon per year (MMGY; 416.4 mil. L per year) corn ethanol plant has about 110 truck deliv­eries of corn per day with each truck carrying about 25,500kg (1000bu) of corn. With a conversion rate of 10.2 L of ethanol per 25.5 kg (1 bushel) of corn, a truck load of 25,500 kg will produce about 10,200 L of ethanol. For comparison with lignocellulosic biomass like corn stover, a truck load of corn stover will hold about 17.5 dry tons of feedstock (39 rect­angular bales of 8′ length x 4′ width x 3′ height; Mukunda 2007) that can be converted to about 4769L of ethanol at a conversion rate of 272.5L of ethanol per dry ton of feedstock. This means that about twice the number of trucks of corn stover (220 trucks) to the plant to keep the same level of production with corn grain are needed in this scenario. Traffic conges­tion possibilities become a big issue and thus inbound logistics of delivering feedstock to the plant need to be carefully designed to prevent traffic congestion.

This section will discuss the inbound logistics of delivering lignocellulosic biomass to a biorefinery. This will be presented in three sections, namely: (1) a comparison of the inbound logistics of three feedstock types, corn grain, and corn cobs that would give us an idea of what could be designed for lignocellulosic biomass; (2) components of the inbound logistics of feedstock delivery at the plant gate; and (3) analysis of inbound logistics of biomass delivered to a biorefinery.