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This study investigated physical, mechanical, and fire properties of the flat-pressed wood plastic composites (WPCs) incorporated with various fire retardants (FRs) [5 or 15% by weight (wt)] at 50 wt % of the wood flour (WF). The WPC panels were made from dry-blended WF, polypropylene (PP) with maleic anhydride grafted PP (2 wt %), and FR powder formulations using a conventional flat-pressing process under laboratory conditions. The water resistance and strength values of the WPC panels were negatively affected by increasing the FR content as compared to the WPC panels without FR. The WPC...

Paper sheets impregnated with flame retardants made from agricultural residues and other additives were studied with the cone calorimeter. The use of sugar beet ethanol eluent (SBE), CaCl2, and ZnCl2 lowered the peak rate of heat release (PRHR) the most in comparison to water treated material. The average effective heat of combustion (AEHC) was lowered by most of our treatments with the exception of BMIC (butylmethylimidazolium chloride)/starch (BMS). The average mass loss rate was lowered by all the treatments, but the most by the use of ZnCl2 and CaCl2 treatments. Mass losses were the...

This article reports the effect of wet-pressing-induced fiber hornification on enzymatic saccharification of lignocelluloses. A wet cellulosic substrate of bleached kraft eucalyptus pulp and two wet sulfite-pretreated lignocellulosic substrates of aspen and lodgepole pine were pressed to various moisture (solids) contents by variation of pressing pressure and pressing duration. Wet pressing reduced substrate moisture content and produced irreversible reduction in fiber pore volume—fiber hornification— as reflected in reduced water retention values (WRVs), an easily measurable parameter, of...

This paper discusses a property associated with plant biomass recalcitrance to enzyme and microbial deconstructions in sugar production from cellulose and hemicelluloses. The hemicelluloses are more readily hydrolyzed to sugars than is cellulose. As a result, optimization to maximize individual glucose and hemicellulose sugar recovery is not possible. This property is an inherent feature of plant biomass and is named polydispersity of plant biomass recalcitrance (PPBR) in this study. A set of pretreatment experiments using eucalyptus and sulfite pretreatment to overcome recalcitrance of...

Conversion of lignocellulose to biofuels is partly inefficient due to the deleterious impact of cellulose crystallinity on enzymatic saccharification. We demonstrate how the synergistic activity of cellulases was enhanced by altering the hydrogen bond network within crystalline cellulose fibrils. We provide a molecular-scale explanation of these phenomena through molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and enzymatic assays. Ammonia transformed the naturally occurring crystalline allomorph Iâ to IIII, which led to a decrease in the number of cellulose intrasheet hydrogen bonds and an increase...

Physical pretreatment of woody biomass or wood size reduction is a prerequisite step for further chemical or biochemical processing in forest biorefinery. However, wood size reduction is very energy intensive which differentiates woody biomass from herbaceous biomass for biorefinery. This chapter discusses several critical issues related to wood size reduction: (1) factors affecting mechanical energy consumption and the post-pretreatment wood size-reduction approach to significantly reduce energy consumption, (2) biomass substrate specific surface area for substrate size characterization...

Enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass in a high shear environment was examined. The conversion of cellulose to glucose in samples mixed in a torque rheometer producing shear flows similar to those found in twin screw extruders was greater than that of unmixed samples. In addition, there is a synergistic effect of mixing and enzymatic hydrolysis; mixing increases the rate of cellulose conversion while the increased conversion facilitates mixing. The synergy appears to result in part from particle size reduction, which is more significant when hydrolysis occurs during intense mixing.

This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of oxalic acid (OA) pretreatment on carbohydrates released from rice straw particles and wood chips. The results showed that OA treatment accelerated carbohydrates extraction from rice straw particles and wood chips. OA pretreatment dramatically increased the amount of carbohydrates extracted, up to 24 times for wood chips and 2.3 times for rice straw particles. Sugars released from the OA-treated rice straw particles and wood chips increased with increasing treatment temperature and duration. OA treatment also improved the primary physical...

Economical biorefining of lignocellulosic biomass (LCB) requires processing high-solids particulate streams. We have developed new techniques and testing protocols to measure the rheological properties of high-solids LCB using a modified torque rheometer (TR). The flow field in the TR is similar to that of a twin-screw extruder and for modeling purposes can be adequately represented as a dual-Couette viscometer. Our experiments show that LCB exhibits Bingham plastic behavior with very large yield stresses. We observe that in the initial stages of mixing, torque values are extremely large...

In this article, we raise three technical concerns about Evans’ 1999 Appita Journal “variance approach” to estimating microfibril angle (MFA). The first concern is associated with the approximation of the variance of an X-ray intensity half-profile by a function of the MFA and the natural variability of the MFA. The second concern is associated with the approximation of the natural variability of the MFA by a function of the MFA. The third concern is associated with the fact that the variance approach was not designed to handle tilt in the fiber orientation. All three concerns are associate...