Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons^™

Energy And Economic Modeling Of Stillage Dewatering Processes In Kentucky Bourbon Distilleries, William Brennan

Theses and Dissertations--Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Stillage is a byproduct of alcohol distillation and must be managed in all distilleries to sustain operations. In the United States, fuel ethanol plants typically convert all stillage into Dried Distillers’ Grains with Solubles (DDGS). This process and its variations are well known. Typical stillage management approaches are not well known, however, for the Kentucky bourbon industry. A survey of stillage management approaches in operational bourbon distilleries was conducted. Process modeling was performed to evaluate the energy and economic considerations of the available stillage dewatering methods for a 7 Million Original Proof Gallon (MMOPG) distillery. Monte Carlo simulations were performed …

The Response Of Beef Cattle To Disturbances From Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uavs), Gabriel Abdulai

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly becoming common in animal agriculture. However, research regarding the impact of UAV disturbance on animal wellbeing is lacking or limited. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of UAV flights on beef cattle by measuring cattle heart and movement rate when introduced to single or multiple UAV flights. A total of 16 -18 crossbred beef heifers were introduced to different flights patterns at between 5 and 9 m above ground level (AGL) at approximately 1 to 2 m/s horizontal velocity for 4 weeks with flights repeated 3 days per week. Results …

Lignin Valorization Via Reductive Depolymerization Using Promoted Nickel Catalysts And Sub- And Supercritical Methanol, Julia Parker

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

While lignin has been regarded as the most promising renewable feedstock for the sustainable manufacture of aromatic compounds, lignin valorization is necessary to improve the economic viability of biorefineries. Reductive catalytic fractionation (RCF), which combines delignification and lignin depolymerization into a single stage while maintaining the structure and integrity of the cellulose component, has evolved as an effective method for processing biomass. The ability of Cu and Fe to promote the performance of a 20% Ni/alumina catalyst when converting native lignin to alkylphenols by RCF in sub- and supercritical methanol was tested. The effectiveness of lignin extraction as measured by …

Implications To Tap And Stream Water Chemistry Due To Variations In Sampling Locations And Watershed Land Use, Dayana Rodriguez

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

The Kentucky River Basin, which is in the Eastern Kentucky Coal Field region, is a rural region with sparse population distribution and a history of water quality impairments. The long history of mining activity in the Commonwealth has not only left a mark on the area’s economy, but it has also shaped the environment. Changes in land use from forested areas to surface mining have been shown to significantly change water chemistry and hydrology. To date, there is limited information regarding the potential exposure and introduction of heavy metals and sulfate entering rural water treatment plants, resulting in a notable …

Classifying And Mapping Aquatic Vegetation In Heterogeneous Stream Ecosystems Using Visible And Multispectral Uav Imagery, Rozalia Agioutanti

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

The need for assessment and management of aquatic vegetation in stream ecosystems is recognized given the importance in impacting water quality, hydrodynamics, and aquatic biota. However, existing approaches to monitor are laborious and its currently not feasible to track spatial and temporal differences at broad scales. The objective of this study was therefore to map and classify aquatic vegetation of a shallow stream with heterogenous mixtures of emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation. Data was collected in the Camden Creek watershed within the Inner Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) was employed and both visible …

Exploration Of Lignin-Based Superabsorbent Polymers (Hydrogels) For Soil Water Management And As A Carrier For Delivering Rhizobium Spp., Toby Adjuik

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Superabsorbent polymers (hydrogels) as soil amendments may improve soil hydraulic properties and act as carrier materials beneficial to soil microorganisms. Researchers have mostly explored synthetic hydrogels which may not be environmentally sustainable. This dissertation focused on the development and application of lignin-based hydrogels as sustainable soil amendments. This dissertation also explores the development of pedotransfer transfer functions (PTFs) for predicting saturated hydraulic conductivity using statistical and machine learning methods with a publicly available large data set. A lignin-based hydrogel was synthesized, and its impact on soil water retention was determined in silt loam and loamy fine sand soils. Hydrogel treatment …

Assessing Machine Learning Utility In Predicting Hydrologic And Nitrate Dynamics In Karst Agroecosystems, Timothy Mcgill

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Seasonal hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico and harmful algal blooms experienced in many inland freshwater bodies is partially driven due to excessive nitrogen loading seen from agricultural watersheds. Within the Mississippi/Atchafalaya River Basin, many areas are underlain with karst features, and efforts to reduce nitrogen contributions from these areas have had varying success, due to lacking a complete understanding of nutrient dynamics in karst agricultural systems. To improve the understanding of nitrogen cycling in these systems, 35 months of high resolution in situ water quality and atmospheric data were collected and fed into a two-hidden layer extreme learning machine …

Above-Ground Biomass Estimation In Oat Breeding Nurseries Using Uav-Based Multispectral Data, Rakshya Dhakal

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Conventional methods of phenotyping for above-ground biomass under field conditions are time consuming, costly, and labor intensive. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) offer a rapid and non-destructive approach for collecting high temporal and spatial resolution imagery of multiple field plots. Vegetation indices (VIs) can be derived from those imagery and have been used broadly for high-throughput biomass estimation, however, they suffer from spectrum saturation issues at high canopy density. In addition, VIs only reflect the canopy spectral information and fail to incorporate the 3-dimensional (3D) canopy structure and architecture information. It also ignores the spatial relationship of pixels to each other …

Managing Water Quantity And Quality With Subsurface Drainage In Eastern South Dakota, Morghan Hurst

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Moisture extremes (excess and deficit) impact crop loss and water quality. Due to excessively wet springs and dry summers, crop damage can occur within the same county or field within the same year. To determine the magnitude of this problem in eastern South Dakota, indemnified crop insurance data for drought and excessive moisture claims were assessed for the years 1991-2020 for the occurrence of both excess moisture and drought in four counties in eastern South Dakota. Results show that there is greater than a 70% chance of the moisture extremes happening in the same year, making subsurface drainage, controlled drainage, …

Recovering And Upgrading Kraft Lignin For Application In Flexible Polyurethane Foam, Peng Quan

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Lignin is the second abundant natural polymer and has been highlighted as a potential substitute for fossil-based raw materials. However, the inherent molecular heterogeneity and the complex recovery processes result in the challenge of controlling the molecular properties and value-added applications of lignin in large scale. To address those issues, a novel acid-liquefaction process was developed in this study to recover Kraft lignin with improved molecular homogeneity directly from black liquor.

In the first study, the liquefaction parameters were screened based on yield and molecular weight properties of the recovered lignin. Then, the recovered lignin samples were used to replace …

Nondestructive Multivariate Classification Of Codling Moth Infested Apples Using Machine Learning And Sensor Fusion, Nader Ekramirad

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Apple is the number one on the list of the most consumed fruits in the United States. The increasing market demand for high quality apples and the need for fast, and effective quality evaluation techniques have prompted research into the development of nondestructive evaluation methods. Codling moth (CM), Cydia pomonella L. (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), is the most devastating pest of apples. Therefore, this dissertation is focused on the development of nondestructive methods for the detection and classification of CM-infested apples. The objective one in this study was aimed to identify and characterize the source of detectable vibro-acoustic signals coming from CM-infested …

Ammonia Cycling And Emerging Particulate Matter Pollutants Under Arable Land-Use Management: A Modelling Approach, Vivien Pohl

Doctoral

Air quality monitoring in Ireland is under the jurisdiction of the Environmental Protection Agency in compliance with the Gothenburg Protocol, EU/national legislation, and the National Clean Air Strategy. Particulate Matter (PM) has been acknowledged as a key atmospheric pollutant, with serious public health impacts and no safe threshold of exposure in place to-date. Ammonia (NH3) emissions are linked to the secondary production of PM through atmospheric reactions occurring with acidic atmospheric components such as sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and hydrochloric acid. These reactions result in the formation of ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate and ammonium chloride, among others. More than 95% …

Pilot-Scale Spinning And Sucrose-Tetra-Aldehydes-Crosslinking Of Feather-Derived Protein Fibers With Improved Mechanical Properties And Water Resistance, Bingnan Mu, Faqrul Hassan, Qianmei Wu, Yiqi Yang

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Faculty Publications

Pliable and water-resistant protein fibers from feathers were developed via continuous one-step spinning and crosslinking using sucrose-tetra-aldehydes. Though flexible protein fibers from feathers were developed, poor wet stability and low tenacity still limit the large and high-end applications of feather-derived fibers. Despite that saccharide aldehydes are considered as an efficient and sustainable crosslinker, substantial concerns such as generation of formaldehyde, high consumption of modifiers, loss of mechanical properties, yellowing, and decline in dyeability of fibers, exist after crosslinking. In this work, we controlled structures of crosslinkers and incorporated disaccharide-tetra-aldehydes into a continuous wet-spinning line. No formaldehyde was generated in the …

Resistome And Mobilome In Surface Runoff From Manured Soil As Affected By Setback Distance, Noelle Mware, Maria C. Hall, Selvakumar Rajendran, John E. Gilley, Amy Schmidt, Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, Yifan Zhang, Xu Li

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Land application of livestock manure introduces antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) into the soil environment. The objectives of this study were to examine the changes of resistome and mobilome in runoff and soil as a function of setback distance, i.e., the distance between manured soil and surface water, and to quantify the contributions of manure and background soil to the ARGs and MGEs in surface runoff. The resistome and mobilome in runoff and soil from a field-scale plot study were characterized using a high throughput quantitative polymerase chain reaction (HT-qPCR) array. It was estimated that a …

Emission Of Volatile Organic Compounds From Land-Applied Beef Cattle Manure As Affected By Application Method, Diet, And Soil Water Condition, Bryan L. Woodbury, John E. Gilley, David B. Parker, David B. Marx

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Land application of beef cattle manure may result in the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOC). This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of diet, land application method, soil water condition, and time since manure application on VOC emissions. Manure was collected from feedlot pens where cattle were fed diets containing 0%, 10%, or 30% wet distillers grains with solubles (WDGS). The effects of manure application method (surface-applied or incorporated) and soil water condition (saturated or wet) on VOC emissions were measured over a 48 h period. Heptanoic, hexanoic, isobutyric, and isovaleric acids contributed 23.5%, 17.6%, 9.26%, and 3.39% …

Geospatial Synthesis Of Biogeochemical Attributions Of Porphyrins To Oil Pollution In Marine Sediments Of The Gulf Of México, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, José Vinicio Macías-Zamora

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Porphyrins are highly persistent in the environment and represent a helpful biogeochemical attribute to assess the spatial distribution of the effects of oil spills on ecosystems and their resilience. In areas prone to natural and human-originated oil spills, the measurement of VO– and nickel– porphyrins in marine–sediment samples can identify the effects of oil pollution across spatiotemporal scales. The goal is to explore whether or not these compounds can be useful indicators of the geospatial attributions of oil contamination in the surficial sediments. We hypothesize that the geospatial gradients of porphyrins in marine sediments from petroleum spills and seepage activities—related …

The Brazilian Soil Spectral Service (Braspecs): A User-Friendly System For Global Soil Spectra Communication, José A. M. Demattê, Ariane Francine Da Silveira Paiva, Raul Roberto Poppiel, Nícolas Augusto Rosin, Luis Fernando Chimelo Ruiz, Fellipe Alcantara De Oliveira Mello, Budiman Minasny, Sabine Grunwald, Yufeng Ge, Eyal Ben Dor, Asa Gholizadeh, Cecile Gomez, Sabine Chabrillat, Nicolas Francos, Shamsollah Ayoubi, Dian Fiantis, James Kobina Mensah Biney, Changkun Wang, Abdelaziz Belal, Salman Naimi, Najmeh Asgari Hafshejani, Henrique Bellinaso, Jean Michel Moura-Bueno, Nélida E. Q. Silvero

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Although many Soil Spectral Libraries (SSLs) have been created globally, these libraries still have not been operationalized for end-users. To address this limitation, this study created an online Brazilian Soil Spectral Service (BraSpecS). The system was based on the Brazilian Soil Spectral Library (BSSL) with samples collected in the Visible–Near–Short-wave infrared (vis–NIR–SWIR) and Midinfrared (MIR) ranges. The interactive platform allows users to find spectra, act as custodians of the data, and estimate several soil properties and classification. The system was tested by 500 Brazilian and 65 international users. Users accessed the platform (besbbr.com.br), uploaded their spectra, and received soil organic …

Unmanned Aerial System-Based Data Ferrying Over A Sensor Node Station Network In Maize, Jasreman Singh, Yufeng Ge, Derek M. Heeren, Elizabeth Walter-Shea, Christopher M. U. Neale, Suat Irmak, Mitchell S. Maguire

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

High Throughput Analysis Of Leaf Chlorophyll Content In Sorghum Using Rgb, Hyperspectral, And Fluorescence Imaging And Sensor Fusion, Huichun Zhang, Yufeng Ge, Xinyan Xie, Abbas Atefi, Nuwan Wijewardane,, Suresh Thapa

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Background: Leaf chlorophyll content plays an important role in indicating plant stresses and nutrient status. Traditional approaches for the quantification of chlorophyll content mainly include acetone ethanol extraction, spectrophotometry and high-performance liquid chromatography. Such destructive methods based on laboratory procedures are time consuming, expensive, and not suitable for high-throughput analysis. High throughput imaging techniques are now widely used for non-destructive analysis of plant phenotypic traits. In this study three imaging modules (RGB, hyperspectral, and fluorescence imaging) were, separately and in combination, used to estimate chlorophyll content of sorghum plants in a greenhouse environment. Color features, spectral indices, and chlorophyll fluorescence …

Maize Response To Irrigation And Nitrogen Under Center Pivot, Subsurface Drip And Furrow Irrigation: Water Productivity, Basal Evapotranspiration And Yield Response Factors, Ali T. Mohammed, Suat Irmak

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Information and data about quantification and comparison of crop water productivity indices for various irrigation levels and methods and nitrogen (N) application timings “simultaneously” under the same conditions do not exist. Unprecedented and extensive field experiments were conducted for maize (Zea mays L.) in 2016 and 2017 under center pivot (CP), subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) and furrow irrigation (FI) methods with full irrigation treatment (FIT), 80% FIT, 60% FIT and rainfed treatment (RFT) with three N application timings. N treatments were: (i) traditional (TN), (ii) non-traditional-1 (NT-1) and (iii) non-traditional-2 (NT-2). Irrigation yield production functions (IYPF); evapotranspiration-yield production functions …