Engineering Commons^™

Sugarcane Bagasse Hydrolysis Enhancement Using Bsa, Antonio Carlos Freitas Dos Santos

Open Access Theses

Lignocellulose is composed of polysaccharides linked to lignin and other aromatic compounds, making the sugars not readily available to fermentation. This entails that biomass must go through the unit operations of pretreatment and enzyme hydrolysis. Pretreatment opens the structure to allow the enzymes to act on and hydrolyze cellulose and hemicellulose to glucose and/or xylose which in turn are fermented to ethanol. Concomitantly, the enzymes interact with soluble phenols and insoluble solids derived from lignin that inhibit hydrolysis. This leads to high enzyme loadings and higher production costs. Soluble phenols can be eliminated through washing. Insoluble lignin, however, demands another …

Design And Plan Of A Modified Hydroponic Shipping Container For Research, John A. Houtman

Open Access Theses

As the world’s population continues to increase, food production will need to increase in order to meet the predicted rise in food demand. However, with increased pressure on cropland available from environmental effects and urbanization, new innovative methods of crop production need to be researched in order to increase agricultural production with limited land. This research focuses on the design of a single form of urban agriculture that is considered Zfarming and has the potential to produce quality urban agricultural produce through ground-based measures. This project produced detailed step-by-step analysis of the design process, develop variability within the modified hydroponic …

Simulation Of Flow And Water Quality From Tile Drains At The Watershed And Field Scale, Colleen Moloney

Open Access Theses

Simulation models such as the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) have become widely used in determining the water quality impacts of various management practices. Ensuring that the algorithms accurately represent the processes simulated has become an important goal. Tile drainage is a standard practice in the Midwest, US in order to reduce risk of yield loss due to excess water. Multiple tile drainage and water table algorithms have been available in the SWAT model between the initial SWAT release and revision 638 used in this study. Testing of those algorithms is often limited. Furthermore, algorithms in the current version …

Mapping And Analyzing Energy Use And Efficiency In A Modified Hydroponic Shipping Container, Rachel E. Sparks

Open Access Theses

In urban centers today, vertical farming is becoming a popular alternative to conventional agriculture in an effort to increase local food production and improve urban food security by growing crops using hydroponic methods in controlled environment spaces. More specifically, one vertical method involves growing crops inside refurbished shipping containers, or a “farm-in-a-box” concept, which offers a flexible, mobile, and scalable means of year-round food production in a variety of climates. Despite benefits of producing food locally, some of the concerns associated with these vertical farming systems include high energy consumption from climate control and electric lighting systems as well as …

Enzymatic Liquefaction Of Untreated Corn Stover, Neal N. Hengge

Open Access Theses

There is an ever increasing need for renewable alternatives to fossil fuels derived from petroleum. This makes feedstocks in the form of lignocellulosic biomass attractive substrates for the production of ethanol and value added chemicals. However, the economics of converting lignocellulosic materials involve high processing costs attributed with pretreatment of the biomass and the use of enzymes for saccharification. Corn stover was obtained for the examination of an upstream processing step to transform the material into a pumpable slurry for subsequent pretreatment and saccharification. Biomass liquefaction was carried out using the enzyme Depol 692L (Biocatalysts, Wales, UK) at 50°C with …

Investigating U.S. Resident Perceptions Of Corporate Social Responsibility In Food And Agriculture, Carissa Jae Morgan

Open Access Theses

Corporations are prioritizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by investing in and actively promoting their social practices. In the U.S. of the modern food supply chain creates a unique challenge for corporations to address concerns about social issues of consumers and non-consumers alike. This study is motivated by the need to better understand individuals’ perceptions of CSR as it pertains to the food supply chain. In April 2015 an online survey collected information from 1,201 U.S. residents with the objective of investigating individuals’ perceptions of relative importance of eight prominent CSR areas relevant to food and agriculture. Demographic, household consumption, …

Watershed Delineation In The Field: A New Approach For Mobile Applications Using Lidar Elevation Data, Samuel Adam Noel

Open Access Theses

With the advancement of mobile devices, opportunities to take watershed management tasks out of the office and into the field can be realized. In turn, field workers can utilize these technologies to expedite the decision-making process so that they may focus on meeting with clients and addressing agricultural watershed management issues. High-resolution (∼1.5 m postspacing) elevation data gathered by light detection and ranging (LiDAR) provides the topographic detail necessary to model hydrology at the field-scale (∼1 km2).

Non-artifactual surface depressions lead to erroneous surface flow patterns when using existing algorithms. So a sequential depression-filling algorithm (SDFA) has been developed to …

Using Energy-Efficient Technologies To Produce Bedding Plants And Microgreens In Protected And Controlled Environments, Joshua R. Gerovac

Open Access Theses

Gerovac, Joshua R. M.S., Purdue University, December 2014. Using Energy-Efficient Technologies to Produce Bedding Plants and Microgreens in Protected and Controlled Environments. Major Professor: Roberto G. Lopez. Production of bedding plants in commercial greenhouses (GHs) located in northern latitudes begins in late winter and continues through late spring when low outdoor temperatures generally necessitate active heating to maintain temperatures suitable for growth and development. Meanwhile, year-round production of microgreens using multi-layer systems requires sole-source (SS) photosynthetic lighting for production. Energy used to provide active heating in commercial GHs or SS lighting in multi-layer systems is second only to labor as …

Quality Changes In Hermetically Stored Corn Caused By Fungi And Sitophilus Zeamais, Nda-Agyima Addae-Mensah K

Open Access Theses

Hermetic storage has been shown to be effective in controlling insect pests and maintaining grain quality of dry grains at 13% moisture and below. However, the feasibility and use of hermetic storage for grains at intermediate mid-moisture levels under the influence of the sub-Saharan African weather conditions is relatively unknown. Hermetic storage experiments were conducted on grade 1 "6297 and 6333 VT RIB" hybrid corn under controlled temperature conditions at 10 degrees centigrade and 25 degrees centigrade at target approximate moisture content levels of 11, 15, 18 and 21% wet basis for a total storage period of 6 months. Corn …

Developing An Unstructured Model To Investigate The Effect Of Ethanol On Product Yields For Glucose And Xylose Cofermentation In Saccharomyces Cerevisiae 424a (Lnh-St), Shane D. Clingenpeel

Open Access Theses

Production of bio-ethanol from lignocellulose requires the efficient fermentation of glucose and xylose, even in the presence of inhibitors. The desired product, ethanol itself, will inhibit the fermentation. A further understanding of how ethanol affects the organism is critical to overcoming its inhibition.

This thesis evaluated the effect of ethanol on the cofermentation of glucose and xylose in two different cases. The first case had an unstructured model created for Saccharomyces cerevisiae 424A (LNH-ST), a genetically modified strain of yeast capable of cofermenting glucose and xylose. The differential equations were based around sugar consumption, and the product yields were investigated …

A Farm Management Information System With Task-Specific, Collaborative Mobile Apps And Cloud Storage Services, Jonathan Tyler Welte

Open Access Theses

Modern production agriculture is beginning to advance beyond deterministic, scheduled operations between relatively few people to larger scale, information-driven efficiency in order to respond to the challenges of field variability and meet the needs of a growing population. Since no two farms are the same with respect to information and management structure, a specialized farm management information system (FMIS) which is tailored to the realities on the ground of individual farms is likely to be more effective than generalized FMIS available today.

This thesis presents the design of a FMIS using proven user-centered design principles. This approach resulted in the …