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Full-Text Articles in Engineering

Automated Solid-Substrate Cultivation Of The Anaerobic Bacterium Clostridium Thermocellum, Mathew J. Ruwaya Jan 2016

Automated Solid-Substrate Cultivation Of The Anaerobic Bacterium Clostridium Thermocellum, Mathew J. Ruwaya

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

The organism Clostridium thermocellum grows on cellulosic substrates and produces ethanol, acetate, lactate, formic acid, and CO2. The organic acids produced alter the growth environment in which the bacteria grows and ultimately inhibit bacterial growth. One method which has been used successfully to maintain the system at acceptable growth conditions is to intermittently flush out the spent media and metabolic products and replace with new fermentation media. Our goal was to design and build an automated system that will automatically flush the spent media from the growing culture and resupply new media without manual intervention. An automated control …


Automated Sorting Of Oriented Tobacco Leaves, Larry G. Wells, M. J. Bader Jan 1990

Automated Sorting Of Oriented Tobacco Leaves, Larry G. Wells, M. J. Bader

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

A mechanism has been developed which removes cured burley tobacco leaves from plants so that midribs are oriented parallel. A photosensor was utilized to count leaves as they were removed and a microprocessor determined the number of leaves allocated to each of three grades. Experiments indicated that 84% of leaves removed could be correctly sorted with a 2.4% material loss at an effective rate of approximately 2.4 times that of conventional methods.