High-resolution Thermogravimetric Analysis For Rapid Characterization of Biomass Composition and Selection of Shrub Willow Varieties

Abstract

The cultivation of shrub willow (Salix spp.) bioenergy crops is being commercialized in North America, as it has been in Europe for many years. Considering the high genetic diversity and ease of hybridization, there is great potential for genetic improvement of shrub willow through traditional breeding. The State University of New York-College of Environmental Science and Forestry has an extensive breeding program for the genetic improvement of shrub willow for biomass production and for other environmental applications. Since 1998, breeding efforts have produced more than 200 families resulting in more than 5,000 progeny. The goal for this project was to utilize a rapid, low-cost method for the compositional analysis of willow biomass to aid in the selection of willow clones for improved conversion efficiency. A select group of willow clones was analyzed using high-resolution thermogravimetric analysis (HR-TGA), and significant differences in biomass composition were observed. Differences among and within families produced through controlled pollinations were observed, as well as differences by age at time of sampling. These results suggest that HR-TGA has a great promise as a tool for rapid biomass characterization.

Impact of Thermal Pretreatment Temperatures on Woody Biomass Chemical Composition, Physical Properties and Microstructure

“…A slow heating rate was selected to clearly identify model components that thermally decompose over different temperature ranges. This rate was much lower than others reported (20 • C/min) [28,34].…”

“…Percent weight for each cell wall chemical component was calculated by weight loss in designated temperature ranges that correlate to the cell wall components from TGA analysis [34]. The designated temperature ranges were selected based on differential thermogravimetry (DTG) curves vs. temperature of the model cell wall components.…”

“…Study of the cell wall composition of the untreated and treated wood samples will aid in understanding the cause of treated wood property changes. The biochemical composition of biomass can be characterized using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) [34,35]. Chen et al qualitatively studied the composition of torrefied biomass (<150 µm, bamboo, banyan and willow) at 250, 275 and 300 • C using a TGA [28].…”

Quantifying Bio-Engineering: The Importance of Biophysics in Biofuel Research

“…TGA/DSC techniques are particularly useful for biomass characterization as biomass is a complex mixture of polymers (cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin). Serapiglia et al (2008); Kaloustian et al (2003); Jaffe, Collins, and Mencze (2006) have shown that the dTG curves www.intechopen.com from biomass can be divided into three weight loss regions for hemicelluloses followed by cellulose and lignin. TGA is a very sensitive technique and can be used to differentiate between mutants of similar kinds of feedstocks.…”

“…TGA is a very sensitive technique and can be used to differentiate between mutants of similar kinds of feedstocks. Serapiglia et al (2008) have used high throughput TGA to find the differences between various mutants of shrub willow. TGA was also used to find the total lignin content of various feedstocks (Ghetti et al 1996).…”