Investigation of the Natural Biodegradation System in Soil; Application for Designing an Efficient Biological Pretreatment Technology for Biofuel

Production.

PresentationBy

Mythreyi Chandoor Biological And Agricultural Engineering Systems

Washington State University,Pullman,WA. Sep 4th, 2009.

•Recap of the experimental Setup .

•Methodology

•Recap of preliminary results

•Future Work

•Prediction of the results.

Agenda

Experimental Set up

•Temperature maintained : 21o C

•Moisture content in the soil : 16%

•Total Number of samples : 5•Time period between collection of the samples : 4 weeks

Methodology

Degradation of the Biomass Microbiology      Soil Analyses Literature search

NMR FT-IR GC-MS Pyrolysis

Microbial characterization

SEM

Dye Degrading potential

Leco analysis

NMR, FTIR.Analyze different kinds of organic acids

Analyzing the data periodically, and check for the different protocols for analysis of the various aspect of the soil degrading system.

Determination of :

Acid soluble lignin,

Acid insoluble lignin,

Ash content of Biomass

Analysis of humic acid,fulvic and Humic with the help of FT-IR (Schnitzer,1991)

Abstract sent to AICHE, ASABE based on the preliminary results of the experiment.

Abstract accepted by AICHE.&ASABE.Experiments

was not successful

Preliminary Experiments conducted on

the first 3 batch samples

• Microbial Characterization

• SEM (Scanning electron Microscopy)

• Dye Degradation experiment

• NMR(Soil State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy)

• FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy)

• GC-MS (Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy)Pyrolysis

Preliminary results Showed …

• 13C CP/MAS NMR analysis showed the structural modification in the area:

• 0-50 ppm indicating the changes in the phenolmethoxyl of coniferyl and sinapyl moieties and terminal methyl of alkyl group,

• 110-150 showing the changes in the O-substituted aromatic carbons of guaiacol, likewise

• 175-200 ppm region indicating the changes in aromatic carbons attached to methoxy groups in syringol units.

• FTIR data analysis which showed the decreasing level of phenolic OH and –OCH3 groups in the successive incubation time.

Future Work ..

• Experiments to be carried out on all the 5 batch samples for the following tests

•NMR(Soil State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

Spectroscopy)

• FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared

Spectroscopy)

• GC-MS (Gas Chromatography Mass

Spectroscopy)Pyrolysis.

Results prediction

4 weeks8 weeks

12 weeks16 weeks

20 weeks

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

%Cellulose

%Hemicellulose

%Lignin

%Cellulose%Hemicellulose%Lignin

Results Prediction Continued ..

The analysis of the percentage amounts cellulose and hemicellulose degraded at the point of Initial degradation of

Lignin would give us an idea about the complex microenvironment existing during the natural biodegradation

process

Might be a feasible approach for the pretreatment technology .