Treesearch

The feasibility of short-read sequencing for genomic analysis was demonstrated for Fibroporia radiculosa, a copper-tolerant fungus that causes brown rot decay of wood. The effect of read quality on genomic assembly was assessed by filtering Illumina GAIIx reads from a single run of a paired-end library (75-nucleotide read length and 300-bp fragment size) at three different stringency levels and then assembling each data set with Velvet. A simple approach was devised to determine which filter stringency was “best.” Venn diagrams identified the regions containing reads that were used in an...

Bamboo was a kind of biomass materials and had great potential as a bio-energy resource of the future in China. The physical and combustion properties of bamboo pellets were determined and the effects of moisture content (MC) and sizes of particle on these properties were investigated in this research. The results showed that MC and sizes of particle affected these properties of bamboo pellets. The effects of MC on physical properties including length, diameter, pellet MC, unit density, bulk density were significant at p=0.05. But there were not significantly difference between particle...

Bamboo is a potential lignocellulosic biomass for the production of bioethanol because of its high cellulose and hemicelluloses content. In this research, ethanosolv pretreatment catalyzed by sulfuric acid was studied in order to enhance enzymatic saccharification of moso bamboo. The addition of 2% (w/w on bamboo) sulfuric acid in water or 75% (v/v) ethanol was demonstrated effective in pretreatment and fractionation of bamboo. The ethanosolv pretreatment yielded a solid fraction with 84.5% cellulose. The cellulose-to-glucose conversion yields were 77.1% (ethanosolv) and 57.3%(water) after...

Bamboo, with its advantages of fast growth, short renovation, easy propagation and rich in cellulose and hemicellulose, is a potential feedstock for bioethanol or other biofuels production. The objective of this study was to examine the fea- sibility of microwave assistant KOH pretreatments to enhance enzymatic hydrolysis of bamboo. Pretreatment was car- ried out by immersing the bamboo in KOH (12% and 8% w/w bamboo) solutions and exposing the slurry to microwave radiation power of 400 W for 30min. Chemical composition of the pretreated substrates and spent liquor was analyzed. Pretreated...

In a unique way, IRENI (Infrared environmental Imaging), operated at the Synchrotron Radiation Center in Madison, combines IR spectroscopy and IR imaging, revealing the chemical morphology of a sample. Most storage ring based IR confocal microscopes have to overcome a trade-off between spatial resolution versus signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For IRENI, this problem has been addressed by introducing a beam-matrix that is comprised of 3x4 IR-beams, generated from the fan of a bending magnet extracted over a range of 320x27mrad2 by employing a set of suitable mirrors, see Fig. 1 [1].

The vibrational properties of Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) wood were investigated in this study as a function of changes in moisture content (MC) and grain direction. The dynamic modulus of elasticity (DMOE) and logarithmic decrement σ were examined using a cantilever beam vibration testing apparatus. It was observed that DMOE and 6 of wood vaned widely during moisture adsorption and desorption. The DMOE of wood conditioned by the adsorption process showed significant increases during the later stages of conditioning when the MC scarcely changed. However, with the desorption...

Biomass like wood chips, switchgrass and other plant residues are first converted to syngas through gasification process using air, oxygen or steam. A downdraft gasifier is performed for syngas production in Mississippi State. The syngas from the gasifier contains up to 49% (vol) N2. High-level nitrogen-containing (nitrogen can be up to 60%) synthesis gas is converted to liquid hydrocarbon mixture through a one-stage catalytic process with a FeePd/ZSM-5 catalyst. The FeePd/ZSM-5 catalyst shows relatively high activity and selectivity in producing liquid hydrocarbons when running with...

Urea is well known to have a synergistic action with phosphorus-based flame retardants (FRs) in enhancing the FR performance of cellulosic materials, but the effect of urea on the thermal decomposition kinetics has not been thoroughly studied. In this study, the activation energy (Ea) for the thermal decomposition of greige cotton nonwoven fabrics treated with various amounts of urea at fixed contents of diammonium phosphate (DAP), was measured using the Kissinger, Friedman, and Flynn-Wall-Ozawa methods. The three methods produced consistent results revealing a dual function of urea...

A pyrolysis and gasification system utilizing molten metal as an energy carrier has been proposed and the initial stages of its design have been completed. However, there are several fundamental questions that need to be answered before the design of this system can be completed. These questions include: How will the molten metal interact with the products of biomass pyrolysis and gasification? Under what conditions is the metal oxidized significantly? Will any metal oxides produced inhibit or accelerate reactions important to gasification and pyrolysis?

Despite the drawbacks associated with tolerant organisms, copper is still used as the key component in current wood preservatives. Copper-tolerant fungi, like Fibroporia radiculosa, produce and accumulate high levels of oxalate in response to copper. The biosynthesis of oxalate has been connected to specific enzymes in the glyoxylate and tricarboxylic acid cycles. To gain insight on the mechanism of oxalate production, four F. radiculosa isolates undergoing decay of untreated and 1.2% ammoniacal copper citrate treated wood were evaluated for the differential expression of citrate synthase...