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Oral Presentation 1-02
Rapid Biomass Analysis: New Tools for Compositional Analysis of Corn
Stover Feedstocks and Process from Ethanol Production :
Bonnie R. Hames, Steve Thomas, Amie D.
Sluiter, Chris Roth, David Templeton. BioEnergy Center National Renewable Energy
Laboratory 1617 Cole Blvd. Golden, CO 80401
E-mail: bonnie_hames@nrel.gov
The ability to obtain an accurate chemical
composition of corn stover and corn stover-derived samples using rapid and
inexpensive methods is a key element supporting commercialization of processes
that convert this feedstock to fuels and chemicals. The development and demonstrated use of rapid analysis methods
for chemical characterization of feedstocks, process intermediates and solid
residues will be presented. These new
techniques combine Near InfraRed (NIR) spectroscopy and Projection to Latent
Structures (PLS) multivariate analysis in methods inexpensive enough to allow
the compositional analysis of hundreds of samples in
one day at a cost of about $10 each.
The ability to accurately sample a bulk feedstock and to analyze
hundreds of samples provides a new tool that is being used to assess the
compositional variability of feedstocks as a function of variety, geographical
location, storage and collection method.
The compositional analysis of thousands of corn stover samples provides
a true average composition of commercially available corn stover. The composition can be reported as an
average compositional with expected variance around that average. Studies of this type require thousands of
samples and would have been too costly to pursue without the savings in time and
cost provided by NIR/PLS rapid analysis methods.
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