Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Commons^™

2015 Nebraska Groundwater Quality Monitoring Report

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The 2001 Nebraska Legislature passed LB329 (Neb. Rev. Stat. §46-1304) which, in part, directed the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) to report on groundwater quality monitoring in Nebraska. Reports have been issued annually since December 2001. The text of the statute applicable to this report follows: “The Department of Environmental Quality shall prepare a report outlining the extent of ground water quality monitoring conducted by natural resources districts during the preceding calendar year. The department shall analyze the data collected for the purpose of determining whether or not ground water quality is degrading or improving and shall present the …

2015 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Ryan Chapman

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain high quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on nearly 17,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, more than 134,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, as well as the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

Development Of Techniques For Assessing And Restoring Streams On Surface Mined Lands, Whitney Cole Blackburn-Lynch

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Surface mining is a commonly used method for extracting coal in the Appalachian Coalfields of the U.S. This mining practice produces excess spoil or overburden, which is often placed in adjacent valleys resulting in the creation of valley fills. These valley fills bury headwater streams, which in turn can negatively impact downstream ecosystems. In 2008, the University of Kentucky designed and constructed 1,020 m of ephemeral, intermittent and headwater streams on an existing valley fill (Guy Cove) as a proof-of-concept. The goal of the project was to evaluate whether or not a stream recreation could occur on mined lands, particularly …

Uncertainty Analysis Of An Irrigation Scheduling Model For Water Management In Crop Production, S. Mun, G. F. Sassenrath, Amy M. Schmidt, N. Lee, M. C. Wadsworth, B. Rice, Jason Q, Corbitt, J. M. Schneider, M. L. Tagert, J. Pote, R. Prabhu

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Irrigation scheduling tools are critical to allow producers to effectively manage water resources for crop production. To be useful, these tools need to be accurate, complete, and relatively reliable. The current work presents an uncertainty analysis and its results for the Mississippi Irrigation Scheduling Tool (MIST) model, showing the margin of error (uncertainty) of the resulting irrigation advice arising solely from the propagation of measurement uncertainty through the MIST calculations. The final relative uncertainty in the water balance value from MIST was shown to be around 9% of that value, which is in the normal range of the margin of …

First Proof Of Concept Of Sustainable Metabolite Production From High Solids Fermentation Of Lignocellulosic Biomass Using A Bacterial Co-Culture And Cycling Flush System, Wanying Yao, Sue E. Nokes

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

To improve the lignocellulose conversion for ABE in high solids fermentation, this study explored the feasibility of cycling the process through the cellulolytic or/and solventogenic phases via intermittent flushing of the fermentation media. Five different flushing strategies (varying medium ingredients, inoculum supplement and cycling through phases) were investigated. Flushing regularly throughout the cellulolytic phase is necessary because re-incubation at 65 °C significantly improved glucose availability by at least 6-fold. The solvents accumulation was increased by 4-fold using corn stover (3-fold using miscanthus) over that produced by flushing only through the solventogenic phase. In addition, cycling process was simplified by re-incubating …

Methane Production By A Packed-Bed Anaerobic Digester Fed Dairy Barn Flush Water, Sean Richard Thomson

Master's Theses

Packed-bed digesters are an alternative to covered lagoon digesters for methane production and anaerobic treatment of dilute wastewaters such as dairy barn flush water. The physical media of packed-beds retain biofilms, often allowing increased treatment rates. Previous studies have evaluated several types of media for digestion of dilute wastewaters, but cost and media fouling have setback commercial development. A major operational cost has been effluent recirculation pumping.

In the present effort, a novel approach to anaerobic digestion of flush dairy water was developed at pilot-scale: broken walnut shells were used as a low-cost packed-bed medium and effluent recirculation was replaced …

Reply To ‘Co2 Emissions From Crop Residue-Derived Biofuels’, Adam Liska, Haishun Yang, Matthew P. Pelton, Andrew E. Suyker

Adam Liska Papers

The soil organic carbon (SOC) model that we used was parameterized with data from arable land under normal farming conditions in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia, but the equation is insensitive to changes in tillage, soil texture and moisture. The model has reasonable accuracy, however, in predicting changes in SOC, residue remaining and CO₂ emissions from initial SOC, carbon inputs from residue, and daily temperature; the shoot-to-root ratio used in the geospatial simulation was 0.29 (that is, root carbon is 29% of total aboveground carbon), which did not underestimate carbon input to soil (Supplementary Figure 2 in Ref. …

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 …

A Case Study Of Changing Cropping Diversity And Agricultural Risk In The Doulthabad Mandal Of Telangana State In India, Srikanth Kondabolu

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Doulthabad^[1] Mandal is a hot semi-arid agro-ecological sub-region (Rao et al. 2006) located in Mahbubnagar District on the North Telangana Plateau in the state of Telangana. Agriculture is the main occupation in this region, which is populated mostly with small and marginal farmers. This study uses the time period from 1971 to 2004 to study the variation in cropping pattern diversity and distribution of rainfall during the monsoons and understand the implications on production risk in agriculture. Quantitative methods were used in determining the changes in rainfall while qualitative methods were used to study cropping system changes. The …

Development Of A Public Education Website: Building Bridges Over Water, Angelina Mckee

Agricultural Education and Communication

Website created by Angelina McKee to educate the public about water resource issues. Water is the basic unit of life, water resources are the basis for what societies and ecosystems are founded upon. Water shortages and droughts are more prevalent in our ever-changing world. It is no shock that there are discrepancies between various stockholders on either sides of the dry riverbed. This senior project resulted in the development of a website that addresses global water resources, water use in California, water conservation, and water allocation. The website informs the public on water resources and related issues and will hopefully …

Vehicle Multi-Pass Rut Volume And Mobility Power Study, William W. Barbour

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

This paper presents the relationship between applied power by a wheeled vehicle to soil and the rutting effects. Specifically, a strong positive relationship was found between cumulative applied power and total rut volume across multiple passes by the vehicle over the same tracks. Field-testing was conducted using a high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV) and two distinct soil types. Sensors on the vehicle measured torque and angular velocity of each of the four wheels, from which applied power was calculated. A rut profile meter was used to document the shape of the rut after set numbers of passes and this profile …

Uncertainties In Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions From U.S. Beef Cattle, Quentin M. Dudley, Adam Liska, Andrea K. Watson, Galen E. Erickson

Adam Liska Papers

Beef cattle feedlots are estimated to contribute 26% of U.S. agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and future climate change policy could target reducing these emissions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of GHG emissions from U.S. grain-fed beef cattle was conducted based on industry statistics and previous studies to identify the main sources of uncertainty in these estimations. Uncertainty associated with GHG emissions from indirect land use change, pasture soil emissions (e.g. soil carbon sequestration), enteric fermentation from cattle on pasture, and methane emissions from feedlot manure, respectively, contributed the most variability to life cycle GHG emissions from beef production. Feeding of …

Co2 Recycling Using Microalgae For The Production Of Fuels, Michael H. Wilson, John Groppo, Andrew Placido, S. Graham, S. A. Morton Iii, Eduardo Santillan-Jimenez, Aubrey Shea, Mark Crocker, Czarena Crofcheck, Rodney Andrews

Center for Applied Energy Research Faculty and Staff Publications

CO₂ capture and recycle using microalgae was demonstrated at a coal-fired power plant (Duke Energy’s East Bend Station, Kentucky). Using an in-house designed closed loop, vertical tube photobioreactor, Scenedesmus acutus was cultured using flue gas as the CO₂ source. Algae productivity of 39 g/(m² day) in June–July was achieved at significant scale (18,000 L), while average daily productivity slightly in excess of 10 g/(m² day) was demonstrated in the month of December. A protocol for low-cost algae harvesting and dewatering was developed, and the conversion of algal lipids—extracted from the harvested biomass—to diesel-range hydrocarbons via catalytic …

Comparative Efficiency And Driving Range Of Light- And Heavy-Duty Vehicles Powered With Biomass Energy Stored In Liquid Fuels Or Batteries, Mark Laser, Lee R. R. Lynd

Dartmouth Scholarship

This study addresses the question, "When using cellulosic biomass for vehicular transportation, which field-to-wheels pathway is more efficient: that using biofuels or that using bioelectricity?" In considering the question, the level of assumed technological maturity significantly affects the comparison, as does the intended transportation application. Results from the analysis indicate that for light-duty vehicles, over ranges typical in the United States today (e.g., 560-820 miles), field-to-wheels performance is similar, with some scenarios showing biofuel to be more efficient, and others indicating the two pathways to be essentially the same. Over the current range of heavy-duty vehicles, the field-to-wheels efficiency is …

Phanerochaete Chrysosporium Pretreatment Of Biomass To Enhance Solvent Production In Subsequent Bacterial Solid-Substrate Cultivation, Wanying Yao, Sue E. Nokes

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

This study investigated pretreatment of corn stover using solid substrate cultivation (SSC) of Phanerochaete chrysosporium (P. chrysosporium) to improve subsequent accessibility to cellulose. Thereafter, Clostridium thermocellum (C. thermocellum) was directly inoculated onto the pretreated biomass to accomplish hydrolysis, followed by solventogenesis by introducing Clostridium beijerinckii (C. beijerinckii).

An enzyme suite containing laccase, lignin peroxidase and manganese peroxidase activity was detected during the cultivation of P. chrysosporium on corn stover within 288 h at an initial moisture content 𝓌_H2O = 80% (mass of water/total mass). Incubation factors, such as substrate moisture content and cultivation …

2014 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Ryan Chapman

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain high quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on nearly 17,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, more than 134,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, as well as the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

2014 Nebraska Groundwater Quality Monitoring Report

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The 2001 Nebraska Legislature passed LB329 (Neb. Rev. Stat. §46-1304) which, in part, directed the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) to report on groundwater quality monitoring in Nebraska. Reports have been issued annually since December 2001. The text of the statute applicable to this report follows: “The Department of Environmental Quality shall prepare a report outlining the extent of ground water quality monitoring conducted by natural resources districts during the preceding calendar year. The department shall analyze the data collected for the purpose of determining whether or not ground water quality is degrading or improving and shall present the …

Direct And Indirect Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Biomass Storage: Implications For Life Cycle Assessment Of Biofuels, Isaac Robert Emery

Open Access Dissertations

Ethanol and other biofuels from cellulosic feedstocks are currently the most promising candidates to replace a large fraction of gasoline consumption in the United States and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Gaps in current approaches to estimating the net greenhouse gas emissions from second-generation biofuels may lead to underestimation of the carbon intensity of these fuels. Current life cycle assessment models of biofuels do not sufficiently account for biomass losses and emissions associated with the harvest and storage of biomass feedstocks, which can require additional fuel and materials use on the farm as well as reducing the effective yield of a …

Evaluation Of Broiler Litter Heat Production During Windrowing & Nitrogen Based Gas Emission Mitigation Using Biofilter, Min Lei

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ammonia emission from animal feeding operations (AFOs) has negative effects on environment and animals' health. Thus measuring and mitigating ammonia emission from AFOs is important for environmental protection. In chapter I, different ammonia measurements were discussed and a mitigation technology- biofilter was represented.

In-house windrowing of built-up litter has been used by broiler producers to reduce pathogen loads and rejuvenate litter for the next flock. When litter is piled up for an extended period during downtime, heat generated by the litter pile can become a substantial heat source due to the metabolism of microorganisms. In chapter II, heat production rates …

Juxtaposing Nasa’S Aeronet Aod With Carb Pm Data Over The San Joaquin Valley To Facilitate Multi-Angle Imaging Spectroradiometer (Misr) Pm Pollution Research, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Airborne particulate matter (PM) has been shown to increase the risk for asthma, chronic bronchitis, cardiopulmonary complications, and respiratory cell membrane damage/infection/leakage. PM levels are currently analyzed from two perspectives: stationary land-based monitoring (LBM) sites and total Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) atmospheric column measurements. Both perspectives often leave miles of space between measuring locations and will have a continually increasing cost from introducing/maintaining sites. The Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) satellite team hopes to begin investigating/archiving PM levels comprehensively via inputting MISR AOD measurements into a function/model which predicts the amount of ground level PM.

In the future, multivariable spatial correlations …

Influence Of Media Composition On The Growth Rate Of Chlorella Vulgaris And Scenedesmus Acutus Utilized For Co2 Mitigation, Czarena L. Crofcheck, Xinyi E, Aubrey Shea, Michael D. Montross, Mark Crocker, Rodney Andrews

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased since the industrial revolution due to increasing combustion of fossil fuels. One possible CO₂ mitigation strategy is the use of microalgae for mitigation of CO₂. This paper focuses on the influence of media composition on the growth rate of two microalgae strains, Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus actus. A KNO₃ based medium was found to work better for Chlorella, while a urea based equivalent worked better for Scenedesmus. The urea based media investigated here resulted in growth similar to that found with previously reported KNO₃ based media. …

A Cradle To Farm Gate Life Cycle Analysis Of Water Use In U.S. Pork Production, Eric Boles

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this study was to analyze water use across a range of regions, scales and practices of the U.S. pork industry. A Life Cycle Assessment of water use within the pork supply chain was performed. Cumulative water use was the environmental impact category used in the LCA to evaluate the impacts of pork production processes throughout the pork supply chain. The functional unit for the analysis was the volume of water required to produce one kilogram of swine (live weight) at the farm gate.

A comprehensive literature review was used to design and propagate algorithms for the National …

Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics In Agriculture: Model Development And Application From Daily To Decadal Timescales, Matthew P. Pelton

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Soil carbon (C) is the largest terrestrial C pool globally, containing more C than the atmosphere and biosphere. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a source and sink of CO₂ emissions to and from the atmosphere, thus influencing future climate change. Understanding SOC dynamics is also important for maintaining C stocks to sustain and improve crop yields. An existing model to estimate changes in SOC due to respiration was modified to operate in three computational platforms: MS Excel, MS Excel with Visual Basic for Applications, and supercomputing. This model was validated against CO₂ flux data from a 9-year field …

Modeling Biofuel Expansion Effects On Land Use Change Dynamics, Ethan Warner, Daniel Inman, Benjamin Kunstman, Brian Bush, Laura Vimmerstedt, Steve Peterson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Increasing demand for crop-based biofuels, in addition to other human drivers of land use, induces direct and indirect land use changes (LUC). Our system dynamics tool is intended to complement existing LUC modeling approaches and to improve the understanding of global LUC drivers and dynamics by allowing examination of global LUC under diverse scenarios and varying model assumptions. We report on a small subset of such analyses. This model provides insights into the drivers and dynamic interactions of LUC (e.g., dietary choices and biofuel policy) and is not intended to assert improvement in numerical results relative to other works.

Demand …

2013 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Joe Kenning

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain good quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on the over 16,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, our greater than 148,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, and the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

Influence Of Flue Gas Components On The Growth Rate Of Chlorella Vulgaris And Scenedesmus Acutus, Czarena Crofcheck, Aubrey Shea, Michael D. Montross, Mark Crocker, Rodney Andrews

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased since the industrial revolution due to the increase in combustion of fossil fuels. One possible alternative strategy is the use of microalgae for CO₂ capture and recycling. Major components in coal-derived flue gas that may accumulate and effect algae growth include both sulfur oxides and fly ash. However, in practical application, sulfur oxides will be converted quickly to the acid product (H₂SO₄) in the aerobic aqueous conditions of algae cultivation. In this article, the influence of elevated H₂SO₄ levels and the presence of coal-derived fly ash …

2013 Nebraska Groundwater Quality Monitoring Report

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The 2001 Nebraska Legislature passed LB329 (Neb. Rev. Stat. §46-1304) which, in part, directed the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) to report on groundwater quality monitoring in Nebraska. Reports have been issued annually since December 2001. The text of the statute applicable to this report follows: “The Department of Environmental Quality shall prepare a report outlining the extent of ground water quality monitoring conducted by natural resources districts during the preceding calendar year. The department shall analyze the data collected for the purpose of determining whether or not ground water quality is degrading or improving and shall present the …

Using Gis To Delineate Headwater Stream Origins In The Appalachian Coal-Belt Region Of Kentucky, Jonathan A. Villines

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Human activity such as surface mining can have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Performing a Cumulative Hydrologic Impact Assessment (CHIA) of such impacts on surface water systems requires knowing the location and extent of these impacted streams. The Jurisdictional Determination (JD) of a stream’s protected status under the Clean Water Act (CWA) involves locating and classifying streams according to their flow regime: ephemeral, intermittent, or perennial. Due to their often remote locations and small size, taking a field inventory of headwater streams for surface mining permit applications or permit reviews is challenging. A means of estimating headwater stream location …

Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis Of Lignocellulosic Biomass Using Infrared Techniques: A Mini-Review, Feng Xu, Jianming Yu, Tesfaye Tesso, Floyd Dowell, Donghai Wang

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Current wet chemical methods for biomass composition analysis using two-step sulfuric acid hydrolysis are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and unable to provide structural information about biomass. Infrared techniques provide fast, low-cost analysis, are non-destructive, and have shown promising results. Chemometric analysis has allowed researchers to perform qualitative and quantitative study of biomass with both near-infrared and mid-infrared spectroscopy. This review summarizes the progress and applications of infrared techniques in biomass study, and compares the infrared and the wet chemical methods for composition analysis. In addition to reviewing recent studies of biomass structure and composition, we also discuss the progress and prospects for …

Review Of Us And Eu Initiatives Toward Development, Demonstration, And Commercialization Of Lignocellulosic Biofuels, Venkatesh Balan, David Chiaramonti, Sandeep Kumar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Advanced biofuels produced from lignocellulosic biomass offer an exciting opportunity to produce renewable liquid transportation fuels, biochemicals, and electricity from locally available agriculture and forest residues. The growing interest in biofuels from lignocellulosic feedstock in the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) can provide a path forward toward replacing petroleum-based fuels with sustainable biofuels which have the potential to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The selection of biomass conversion technologies along with feedstock development plays a crucial role in the commercialization of next-generation biofuels. There has been synergy and, even with similar basic process routes, diversity in the …