Near-infrared spectroscopy for fast determination of biomass components

Fast and accurate determination of biomass composition remains challenging issues, as biomasses are complicate systems of cellulose, hemicellulose, ligin mixtures with different kinds of linkages. Several methods have been used in this matter using wet chemistry and chromatography; however those methods are time consuming. Non-deconstructive near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is a fast growing technique to evaluate the chemicals in food and agriculture, pharmaceutical, petroleum and pulp paper industry. This presentation reports our research effort to use NIR spectroscopy combining with multivariate statistical analysis to fast estimate the composition of any biomass species. We developed calibration models based on the compositional analysis and NIR spectroscopy across different biomass samples such as switch grass, corn stover, softwood and hardwood. The preliminary results show that NIR spectroscopy can be used as an initial screen to determine the biomass composition and estimate its digestibility in the biofuel industry. We are in our progress to build a software module for fast screening biomass using NIR data