Abstract

The objective was to study the effect of future harvesting and handling technologies on the cost and energy efficiency of supply chains for young dense thinnings. The system costs and energy requirements were modeled using type of stands, products delivered, and transport distances as variables. In total, 14 systems were analyzed, of which five represented future systems. The effects of increasing the payloads of off-road and road transportation of whole tree (WT) parts by 10%, 20%, and 30% were also analyzed. If boom-corridor thinning technologies, optimized bundle-harvesters, and loadcompression devices are developed, on average, costs are reduced by 12 compared with present systems. For example, at an average harvested tree size of 22 dm technologies would reduce the cost by up to 15% and the energy requirements by 21%. These effects increase with reduced tree sizes and increased transportation distances. The effects of future technologies are especially significant for tree sizes below 30 dm Thus, there should be increased research and development of boom-corridor felling technology, bundle-harvesters, and load-compression devices.–27% and 11–30% less energy is required when3, the supply of WT using future3, representing a significant part of the potential that could be harvested annually in Sweden.

Published in

Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research
2014, Volume: 29, number: 8, pages: 793-812

SLU Authors

• Bergström, Dan

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Di Fulvio, Fulvio

  • Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG7 Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all


UKÄ Subject classification

Forest Science


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02827581.2014.976590

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63516