CEREO Newsroom Woody Biomass

Team:

Scientist: Vikram Ravi, Civil and Enviromental Engineering (Pullman)

Reporter: Hannah Ray Lambert

Project Description:

The research work that will be covered as part of the CEREO newsroom project is a part of the Northwest Advanced Renewable Alliance (NARA) aviation biofuel initiative, which aims to create a sustainable industry to produce aviation biofuels and important co-products from woody biomass in the Pacific Northwest. As a PhD student, my work is on improving our understanding of the potential positive and negative impacts of the biofuel supply chain on local to regional air quality.The NARA project relies on the forest residue, logging debris etc. as raw material for the biofuels. This woody biomass is currently burned as slash and broadcast prescribed fires which can produce significant amounts of smoke and which can have dramatic impacts on local air quality. For the NARA project, we are conducting an assessment of the impact of prescribed fires in the Northwest using the AIRPACT air quality model (http://www.lar.wsu.edu/airpact/). Initial results indicate that prescribed fires contribute significantly to PM2.5 concentrations in parts of Pacific Northwest during the months of October and November which are the months when the prescribed fire activities peak for the region. Additionally, information from other NARA groups will be used to develop better estimates of the amount of biomass available for harvest and better estimates of the emissions associated with biorefineries for making aviation biofuel. All emissions estimates will eventually feed into AIRPACT, output from which will be used for understanding air quality impacts and assessing the benefits and dis-benefits of the aviation biofuel supply chain in the Northwest.