Article
Characteristics of Swedish forest biomass terminals for energy
Forest biomass terminals provide diverse services to the forest industry: buffer storage, transfers of material between different modes of transport, raw material upgrading, etc. Terminals’ operational costs are highly sensitive to their layout and design. In order to design efficient terminals, it will be essential to understand the current state of forest terminals. To this end, a survey was sent out to companies operating forest terminals for energy in Sweden. The respondents were asked to provide information about their terminals’ areas, volumes of material handled, equipment, inventory methods and age. The terminals were grouped into four size classes according to their surface area. Most terminals covered < 5 ha; terminals in this class accounted for 65% of the country’s total terminal area. In addition, more than half the country’s total forest biomass output was handled at terminals of