EuroPruning

EuroPruning: Development and implementation of a new, and non existent, logistics chain for biomass from pruning

Project Duration:  April 2013 - March 2017

Funding: EU Project

The EuroPruning project aimed at demonstrating all the developments and tools generated attending to the new improved logistics for pruning residues. This includes harvesting, transport and storage for agricultural prunings (fruit tree, vineyards and olive grove)

Responsibility: Department of Energy and Technology of SLU is one of project partners. Our research team was responsible for the Integrated Logistics and Development of Smart System and Life Cost Analysis . The main objective of was to develop and implement innovative logistics tools in order to optimize environmentally and economically the handling of agricultural residues along the whole value chain. The traceability for monitoring from the harvest to the final user will be included to assure the quality of the prunings and  the main activities for which our research team is responsible include:

• Description of biomass logistics components and current adaptability;
• Biomass labelling and traceability/tracking
• Requirements for the development of smart system for monitoring of wood pruning logistics and definition of its functional specification
• Development of Smart Box integrated with GPS, GPRS and GIS tools
• Validation and optimisation of the performance of smart system
• Logistics costs (life cycle cost analysis)