Forest Concepts published a design report that goes through the logic used to establish bale sizes for use in conceptual baler design and for BRDI-baled biomass handling models. Forest Concepts is a partner in Subtask 1.2 of the Feedstock Development technical area.
The choice of bale sizes are not very different from agricultural bales and are compatible with agricultural bale handling equipment.
The big difference between woody biomass and agricultural hay bales is that we expect to achieve high bale densities (based in-part on Springfield, Oregon trials in 2014 with John Sessions of Oregon State University) for lower cost transport and storage.
The next step is to establish general baler configurations and hydraulic power requirements to achieve the high productivity we will need in logging slash situations.
Please read and comment on the design report since these sizes and densities will constrain most of the rest of the baler engineering work.
