Engineering Properties of Biomass - Engineering and Science of Biomass Feedstock Production and Provision - page 32

close fit with the data with R 2 = 0.99. Up to now, there is a comprehensive database
of moisture sorption database for woody biomass in the USDA handbook [ 55 ].
However, there is a lack of moisture sorption database for the thermally treated
biomass at different severities (e.g., temperature and time) and using different ther-
mal treatment methods. Future work should focus on the development of the mois-
ture sorption database of thermally treated biomass to optimize the design of
handling, storage, drying, grinding, pelletizing, and conversion units.

2.4 Summary

Biomass is a natural resource that exhibits heterogeneity in structure and chemical
composition. A deep understanding of biomass physical properties and fast tools for
characterizing these properties are required for the design and safe operation of
processing facilities. Recent research on bulk density, particle size, and flowability
of biomass particle showed that traditional sieve analysis cannot cover the measure-
ment of all three dimensions of the particles and thereby could not correlate well
with the packing and flowability data. Digital imaging techniques seem to be an
advanced solution to capture more information from projected areas in all three
dimensions. Fuel properties of lignocellulosic biomass could be quickly determined
by a simple color measurement. The moisture sorption database of thermally treated
lignocellulosic biomass is under development, and it will be highly useful and of
interest to the power generation companies to replace coal with biomass as fuel for
power generation.

References

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Science Publishers, New York
4. Rao MA, Rizvi SH (1995) Engineering properties of foods. Marcel Dekker, New York
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