As part of the organizing committee, I have spent almost 80% of my time working on the pre-event preparation and purchase and logistics. Now I finally got a bit of time to post summary of two of the latest literature that came in my google scholar alert.
1. "Biomass as a renewable source of energy"
Drożyner, P., Rejmer, W., Starowicz, P., Klasa, A., & Skibniewska, K. A.. 2013. Biomass as a renewable source of energy. Technical Science.
In this review, the authors actually focuses on the available/suggested technology in/for Poland. I like how biomass-related articles stated the fact that "Energy from renewable sources, although more expensive than conventional energy, has many advantages. It leads to reduction of carbon emission to atmosphere, is compatiable with rules of balanced development [1st time I heard of this], reduces the dependence on fossil fuels and is not as dangerous as atomic energy [LOL, biomass energy IS very dangerous huh...].
Biomass can be in solid state (e.g. briquettes, pellets), liquid state (biodiesel, methanol, ethanol) or gas form (biogas, syngas and hydrogen). In Poland, biomass is getting more popular to be used in electricity generation. The author briefly discussed 7 types of biomass sources: (1) energy dedicated willow (short-rotation coppice- SRC Willow), (2) sweet sorghum (shown in picture below), (3) giant miscanthus, (4) Jerusalem artichokes, (5) Oil palm [Oh, this is all over my country, Malaysia], (6) Agricultural wastes, e.g. straw, stems, manure, whey, mollasses. (7) Wastes of food and agricultural industry e.g. peelings, seeds, mill cakes of juice and beer production, distillery stillage, slaughter waste.
Then the article has a shift switch to Methane/biogas production through fermentation. An interesting process mentioned is a two-step production of hydrogen in 1st step and methane in 2nd step through fermentation of Laminario japonic i.e. kelp or Dashi kombu. I like plenty of Dashi stock in my miso soup.
Roy, J. J., Sun, L., & Ji, L. 2013. Microalgal proteins: A new source of raw material for production of plywood adhesive. Journal of Applied Phycology, 1-8.
My supervisor, Dr. S, mentioned that I might be working on understand the adhesives that bind wood pellets together. So, this will be my 1st review of adhesive literature on my blog.
Adhesives is predominantly based on urea or melamine formaldehyde technology. Formaldehyde has been recognized as human carcinogen. Thus, a safer, more sustainable method of adhesive production has to be introduced. Compared with plants, microalgae are more productive for biomass and proteins. They do not compete directly for farm land. Algal proteins have a much more balanced composition of amino acids. The reactive groups in these amino acids can be effectively used for chemical modification and cross-linking to improve the bonding quality of algae-base adhesive.
The author produced Type II adhesive (Interior-use plywood adhesive, only slightly water resistant) from dry algal cells (Spirulina platensis and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii). They noted that protein in SPPI (Spirulina Platensis Protein Isolate) were already denatured in the preparation process and were not present as protein bodies as in soybean floor. Nevertheless, NaOH treatment of the protein isolate still signficantly improved the adhesive strength. CRPI (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Protein Isolate) made better plywood adhesive as it showed better adhesive strength and water resistance than SPPI, shown similar level as SPI (soy protein isolate). Overall, the microalgal protein isolates showed promising adhesive properties that meet the type II plywood standard. Glyoxal was found to be the best cross-linker for these two algae proteins.
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