The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an endorsement of views which may be expressed. Technical presentations are not subject to the formal peer review process by ASABE editorial committees; therefore, they are not to be presented as refereed publications. Citation of this work should state that it is from an ASABE meeting paper. EXAMPLE: Author's Last Name, Initials. 2010. Title of Presentation. ASABE Paper No. 10----. St. Joseph, Mich.: ASABE. For information about securing permission to reprint or reproduce a technical presentation, please contact ASABE at rutter@asabe.org or 269-429-0300 (2950 Niles Road, St. Joseph, MI 49085-9659 USA). An ASABE Meeting Presentation Paper Number: 1009413 An Optimal Storage and Transportation System for a Cellulosic Ethanol Bio-energy Plant Jason Judd, National Needs Fellow, Graduate Student Industrial Systems Engineering Dept., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 Subhash C. Sarin, Professor Industrial Systems Engineering Dept., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 John S. Cundiff, Professor Biological Systems Engineering Dept., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 Robert D. Grisso, Professor Biological Systems Engineering Dept., Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 Written for presentation at the 2010 ASABE Annual International Meeting Sponsored by ASABE David L. Lawrence Convention Center Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania June 20 – June 23, 2010 Abstract. After locating a bio-energy plant for the conversion of biomass to biofuels, the logistics component associated with transporting the biomass is a nontrivial system. In this paper, we propose local storage locations throughout an area for the temporary storage and loading of round bales. Prior results of uniformly distributing storage locations over an area are compared with those obtained by using a mathematical programming-based approach that seeks optimal locations for the objective of minimizing the transportation and storage location costs. By having less storage locations and longer haul distances, this approach achieves savings of 79%. The optimal solution uses 39 storage locations compared with 167 locations proposed in the previous study. With the transportation costs amounting to 65% of the total cost of biofuels, these savings are significant and show that, due to the complexity of the problem, human intuition and uniform storage placement strategy may lead to results that are far from optimum. Instead, placement of more storage locations in areas with higher field densities (Mg/ha) provides a better solution. Moreover, such solutions are best obtained through the use of optimization-based methodologies. Keywords. biomass, switchgrass, biomass logistics, in-field hauling, hauling costs, satellite storage locations, location allocation, integer programming, modeling