A direct shear cell to measure the shear strength and flow properties of chopped switchgrass, wheat straw and corn stover was designed, fabricated, and tested. The shear strength measured at various normal stresses was found to be significantly different. Shear strength for all three chopped biomass types measured at a particular normal stress was not significantly different. The R value of the...

A grain combine was equipped with a whole-plant corn head and modified to produce single-pass, whole-plant corn harvesting with two crop streams: grain and stover. Capture of potential stover DM varied from 48% to 89% for leaves, from 49% to 92% for stalks, and was greater than 90% for husks and cobs, depending on corn head height. Stover aggregate moisture varied between 36% and 50% (w.b.), an...

BACKGROUND Enzymes for plant cell wall deconstruction are a major cost in the production of ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass. The goal of this research was to develop optimized synthetic mixtures of enzymes for multiple pretreatment/substrate combinations using our high-throughput biomass digestion platform, GENPLAT, which combines robotic liquid handling, statistical experimental design an...

Lignocellulolytic white-rot fungi allow the bioconversion of agricultural wastes into value-added products that are used in a myriad applications. The aim this work was to use corn residues (Zea mays L.) produce valuable under solid-state fermentation (SSF) with Pleurotus ostreatus. White-rot fungus P. ostreatus isolated from maize silage (MS) and thereafter it inoculated on MS as substrate com...

A soil incubation experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of biochar application (2% w/w) on urea hydrolysis and inorganic nitrogen accumulation. Fresh biochars were produced from maize stover that was pyrolyzed at 300 °C, 500 °C, and 700 °C. Then the matured biochars were obtained via a 50 days maturing process. Biochar prepared at 700 °C strongly accelerated the urea hydrolysis and...

Two studies were conducted to optimize use of alkaline-treated corn stover and wheat straw and distillers grains as partial corn replacements. In Exp. 1, a finishing experiment used 30 pens (12 steers/pen) of calf-fed steers (initial BW = 374 ± 23.9 kg) with a 2 × 2 + 1 factorial arrangement of treatments with 6 replications per treatment. Factors were grind size, where corn stover was processe...

A life-cycle assessment (LCA) of corn ethanol was conducted to determine the reduction in the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for corn ethanol compared to gasoline by integrating biomass fuels to replace fossil fuels (natural gas and grid electricity) in a U.S. Midwest dry-grind corn ethanol plant producing 0.19 hm y 1 of denatured ethanol. The biomass fuels studied are corn stover an...

Thermochemical gasification is one of the most promising technologies for converting biomass into power, fuels and chemicals. The objectives of this study were to maximize the net energy efficiency for biomass gasification, and to estimate the cost of producing industrial gas and combined heat and power (CHP) at a feedrate of 2000kg/h. Aspen Plus-based model for gasification was combined with a...

Field studies with and without Bradyrhizobium was carried out with five mungbean varieties to observe the yield and yield attributes of mungbean. Five mungbean varieties viz. BARI Mung-2, BARI Mung-4, BARI Mung-5, BINA mung-2 and Barisal local, and the rhizobial inoculum (Bradyrhizobium strain BAUR-604) were used. The seeds and stover were dried and weighed adjusting at 14% moisture content and...