This report describes a Biofuel Transportation Analysis Tool (BTAT), developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Volpe, The National Transportation Systems Center, in support of the Department of Defense Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The purpose of BTAT is to help ONR and FAA better understand the transportation needs and constraints associated with biofuel feedstock collection, processing, and fuel distribution, specifically alternative jet fuel produced from oilseed feedstocks.

BTAT uses calculations of available agricultural production and existing transportation infrastructure to generate locations of potentially supportable biorefineries; optimal transportation routes for moving biofuels from the point of oilseed feedstock production/pre-processing to refinement and finally to fuel aggregation and storage; allocation of feedstock and fuels among biorefineries and depots based on demand and efficient transport patterns; and transportation costs, CO2 emissions, fuel burn, and vehicle trips and miles traveled as a result of the transportation of feedstock and fuels.

This report describes how BTAT was developed and the functionality of the tool; it also demonstrates the tool's capability through the analysis of seven scenarios.

This report was prepared for the Federal Aviation Administration and Office of Naval Research by Volpe authors Kristin C. Lewis, Gary Baker, Tom Lin, Scott Smith, Olivia Gillham, Alisa Fine, Stephen Costa, Ze Chen, and Coralie Cooper.

Report: Biofuel Transportation Analysis Tool: Description, Methodology, and Demonstration Scenarios (PDF).

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