Michael Montross

University of Kentucky | UKY · Department of Biosystems & Agricultural Engineering

Superabsorbent polymers (SAPs), sometimes known as hydrogels, have been proposed as soil amendments to enhance soil water management. But the performance of SAPs as soil amendments depends on their stability in soil. Bio‐based SAPs have been praised as environmentally sustainable due to their apparent fast biodegradation relative to synthetic SAPs....

Highlights A lignin-based hydrogel was synthesized and shown to possess a swelling ratio of 2013%. The hydrogel contained important hydrophilic hydroxyl groups and macropores for water retention. The hydrogel improved soil water retention in silt loam soil at high matric potentials and in the dry soil range. Increasing hydrogel concentration increa...

Soil hydraulic properties are important for the movement and distribution of water in agricultural soils. The ability of plants to easily extract water from soil can be limited by the texture and structure of the soil, and types of soil amendments applied to the soil. Superabsorbent polymers (hydrogels) have been researched as potential soil amendm...

Cell immobilization in polymers have proven successful in protecting the nitrogen‐fixing bacteria Rhizobium. This study evaluated the feasibility of using lignin to develop lignin–alginate beads with a starch additive to immobilize and release Rhizobial cells. A lignin–alginate hydrogel was synthesized and cultured at different concentrations with...

Superabsorbent polymers (hydrogels) have been studied for their ability to influence soil hydraulic conductivity because they can store and release water due to their swelling properties. However, concerns related to the increased use of synthetic hydrogels necessitates a switch to bio-based hydrogels, which are renewable and more biodegradable in...

Hydrogels have been used as soil amendments to increase soil water retention in arid regions as well as for water storage in soils where there is excess moisture for future plant use. The objective of this study was to determine if initial solute concentration of a poly (acrylic acid) partial sodium salt hydrogel, added to soil as an amendment, inc...

Many farm-harvested or market-purchased fresh fruits and vegetables are consumed fresh or frozen, with little to none utilized as dry products; in general, dried fruits and vegetables are purchased directly from the market whenever needed. With the wide availability of tabletop kitchen equipment for fruit and vegetable processing (mechanical cutter...

This technical note presents the development of a new apparatus and data processing method to accurately estimate the volume of stored grain in a bin. Specifically, it was developed to account for the variability in surface topography that can occur in large diameter bins when partially unloaded. This was accomplished using a laser distance meter t...

High-solids lignocellulosic pretreatment using NaOH followed by high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis was evaluated for an on-farm biochemical conversion process. Increasing the solids loadings for these processes has the potential for increasing glucose concentrations and downstream ethanol production; however, sequential processing at high-solids load...

Pretreatment is an essential step in the formation of liquid biofuels. Switchgrass and miscanthus were pretreated using calcium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide, and sodium hydroxide at an equivalent hydroxyl concentration (0.46 g OH−/g dry biomass), at a solids content of 40%, and two temperatures (25 and 50 °C) for seven days. The cellulose, hemice...

In grain bins, the compaction of stored grain is caused by the overbearing pressure of the bulk material in the bin. To predict the amount of grain in the bin, compaction values must be determined based on the average bulk density of the stored material. However, bulk density is determined following the Federal Grain Inspection Service (FGIS) guide...

Phanerochaete chrysosporium treatment is less effective as a biological pretreatment on feedstock with larger particle sizes. We hypothesized that the improved effectiveness of the pretreatment when smaller particle sizes are used may be due to the inherently higher bulk density with smaller particle sizes. The effects of substrate bulk density and...

The production characteristics from a pilot scale flat ring die pellet mill were evaluated for four different biomass materials (miscanthus, corn stover, switchgrass, and wheat straw) to determine the effect of moisture preconditioning upon pelletization. The moisture content of the material entering the pellet mill was 10%, 15%, 20% and 25% for mi...

INTER-AGENCY AGREEMENT between the AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE (ARS) and the FEDERAL CROP INSURANCE CORPORATION (FCIC) April 30, 2013

Estimation of the quantity of stored grain is important for crop insurance, financial statements, and inventory control. Traditionally, the height of grain has been measured using weighted tape measures, and the volume is subsequently computed using standard geometric shapes (cylinders and cones) along with visual correction of the grain surface. F...

The bulk density of grain in a storage structure varies vertically and horizontally due to the overburden pressure created by the cumulative weight of the overlying material. As the overburden pressure increases, the stored material compacts. This compaction is believed to be caused by rearrangement of kernels along with higher intergranular stress...

Bulk grain angle of repose (AoR) is a key parameter for inventorying grain, predicting flow characteristics, and designing bins and grain handling systems. The AoR is defined for two cases, piling (dynamic) or emptying (static), and usually varies with grain type. The objective of this study was to measure piling angles of repose for corn, sorghum,...

This article proposes two Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based models to characterize the switchgrass drying process: The first one models processes with constant air temperature and relative humidity and the second one processes with variable air conditions and rainfall. The two ANN-based models proposed estimated the moisture content (MC) as a f...

The interplay between nitrogen fertilization (N), yield, nitrous oxide emissions (N2O), and diesel fuel utilization associated with harvest and transport logistics of biomass crops remains poorly understood. In this research, we show that intensification (in terms of N) of bioenergy cropping to maximize yield supports not only minimized land use bu...

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. Ho...

The focus of this research was to evaluate the horizontal pressures on a cylindrical metal silo of corrugated walls and flat bottom with 1.82m diameter and 5.4m high, and to compare the values with those obtained theoretically by the ISO 11697, EP 433 and AS 3774 standards. The silo was symmetrically filled and constant speed with wheat cv. soft re...

Agricultural grains, including cereal grains such as wheat, corn and rice, and oil seeds such as soybeans and canola, must be stored, transported, and conveyed using methods that preserve their quality as seeds, food stuffs, or raw materials. Grain quality is maintained by drying grain to moisture contents suitable for long term storage on farm or...

Storing grain in bins can cause packing thereby increasing its bulk density and storage-unit capacity. Models to more accurately predict the grain packing for a wide range of grains and bins have been developed; however, they have not been sufficiently calibrated for widespread use. This study was conducted to determine the packing factor of wheat...

Mass air flow is an important parameter to consider in animal research applications, especially for the generation of heat and moisture production data. The high flow rates and low operating pressures in animal research facilities present a unique and costly challenge for measurement of mass air flow rates. Mass air flow sensors for automotive appl...

Solid substrate cultivation (SSC), in which microbes are grown on solid substrates in the absence of free water, is a traditional technology with the potential to produce novel chemicals and biomass products for use in the manufacture of biofuels. It is currently relatively difficult to accurately measure microbial growth on a solid substrate, and...

The Brookings Institute analysis rate both Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky (USA) as two of the nation's largest carbon emitters. This high carbon footprint is largely due to the fact that 95% of electricity is produced from coal. Kentucky has limited options for electric power production from low carbon sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, a...

Due to concerns with biomass collection systems and soil sustainability there are opportunities to investigate the optimal plant fractions to collect for conversion. An ideal feedstock would require a low severity pretreatment to release a maximum amount of sugar during enzymatic hydrolysis. Corn stover fractions were separated manually and analyze...

Kentucky, as with many regions around the globe, has a relatively long growing season with significant rainfall that could produce sizeable quantities of perennial herbaceous and woody biomass on land that does not compete with food crops. Additionally, there are limited options for renewable power production from low carbon sources such as solar-p...

Experiments were performed to evaluate the influence of seed shape and the packing orientation of seeds on the pressure drop. Relationships between the pressure drop and airflow velocity of five seeds were determined as a function of filling method and its influence on kernel orientation. The sample container was a cube with a length of 0.35m on ea...

Two highly active trifunctional hemicellulases were constructed by linking the catalytic portion of a xylanase with an arabinofuranosidase and a xylosidase, using either flexible peptide linkers or linkers containing a cellulose-binding domain. The multifunctional enzymes retain the parental enzyme properties and exhibit synergistic effects in hydr...

An obstruction attached to the wall of a bin produced by cohesive, moldy grain has been reported as a source of failure in steel bins. A study was conducted to estimate the effect of two-dimensional (plane) and three-dimensional (block) obstructions attached to the corrugated wall in a flat-floor model bin where the lateral wall pressure and vertic...

A study was conducted to estimate the degree of variability of the airflow resistance in wheat caused by the filling method, compaction of the sample, and airflow direction. Two types of grain chambers were used: a cylindrical column 0.95 m high and 0.196 m in diameter, and a cubical box of 0.35 m side. All factors examined were found to influence...

Experiments were conducted to measure the changes in bulk density of cracked corn, corn meal, soybean meal, cotton seed meal, and distillers dried grain (without solubles) when subjected to simulated overburden pressures. All materials were tested at two moisture content levels (approximately 8% and 12% w.b.) and seven pressures between 0 and 69 kP...

Currently, traditional outdoor and raceway aquaculture systems in the United States produce less than 1% of the world’s shrimp. With 90% of domestic demands being imported from abroad, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) have been developed to produce shrimp at high densities in tanks located in a controlled environment. The sustainability of R...

Compost material as biofilter media has been extensively used for contaminant gas treatment in the recent years. However, one of the biggest challenges in the use of this type of material is compost moisture content control. In this work it was observed that for high levels of equilibrium relative humidity (ERH) low levels of equilibrium moisture c...

Dangerous nonuniformity of grain loads within a silo may be caused by eccentric discharge, eccentric loading, eccentric structural members fastened to the wall, geometrical imperfections or nonuniformity of the frictional conditions. Some of these effects have been quantified based on testing corrugated‐walled, flat floor model silos filled with wh...

Corn stover has been identified as a potential feedstock for the production of fermentable sugars and thermochemical processes. The availability and efficiency of typical hay equipment for collecting corn stover has not been well quantified. Corn stover was collected for two years on a central Kentucky farm near Louisville. Six different harvesting...

Numerous methods have been proposed for determining the pressure exerted by grain at discrete locations in a storage structure, but few satisfactory solutions have been found. Earth pressure cells were tested as potential measurement devices for grain bins. Earth pressure cells are commercial transducers designed for geotechnical applications. Cali...

Tests were conducted in a model grain bin to evaluate the vertical loads acting on differently shaped obstructions embedded in wheat during filling, detention, and discharge. The bin had corrugated galvanized steel walls with a 1.83 m diameter and a flat bottom. All tests were conducted in a bin that was centrically loaded and unloaded. Three diffe...

A condensation sensing and control system was design to detect condensation using a commercially available leaf wetness sensor (LWS). The leaf wetness sensor was a variable resistance grid-type that responded to moisture on the surface. A circuit was developed to compare the LWS voltage output to a user specified reference voltage, and operate a re...

Measurement of sugars using traditional spectroscopic (UV/Vis) assays or high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can be time consuming and expensive. Alternative methods for measuring sugars after enzymatic hydrolysis of biomass would be convenient for screening potential biomass feedstocks and pretreatment methods. Fourier transform infrared...

Recently Brazil has undergone agricultural growth that has forced several sectors to adjust their business structure to maintain competitiveness within the process of economic globalization. In this context, the poultry production has focused on new alternatives to increase productivity and reduce costs without affecting the quality of the final pr...

Significant spatial yield variations are known to exist in cornfields with different soil types, topsoil depth, and other variables. Similarly, variations might also be found among the highly valued chemical components (oil, protein, and starch) in corn kernels due to local differences in soil type, fertility, acidity/pH, organic matter, etc. This...

Mild solvent extraction (MSE) is an extractive process previously used to directly convert coal to liquid products, gases, and solid chars. The MSE of white oak at three temperatures (300, 350, and 425 °C) and of red oak particles at a single temperature (350 °C) was investigated using anthracene oil as the solvent. For white oak, the intermediate...

Airflow resistance of grains and oilseeds has been extensively studied. Traditionally the data has been presented using Shedd's curves. However, this assumes that airflow resistance is independent of grain depth. Grain undergoes compaction during storage that changes the bulk density, porosity, and therefore the airflow resistance. Ergun's equation...

Darcy's law is a function of viscosity, permeability, and velocity and can be used to predict the airflow resistance in granular materials at low air velocities. Permeability also governs the magnitude of natural convection currents during periods of non-aerated grain storage. The permeability of corn, soybeans, soft white winter wheat, and soft re...

Drying experiments were conducted to simulate two typical types of on-farm systems: high- temperature bin dryers and high temperature automatic batch or continuous flow units. Temperature and relative humidity levels chosen were 60 C and 10%, and 80 C and 6%, respectively. Specialty grains selected were high-oil corn, triple-null soybean, and soft...

Numerous factors influence the sizing of aeration fans for summer-harvested crops. Thirty years of weather data for Lexington, Kentucky, were analyzed and the cost of aeration was compared for two axial fans (afan1, afan2) and one centrifugal fan (cfan1). Aeration costs were defined as the sum of the following components: The cost of owning the fan...

Most aeration fans are sized to produce a minimum airflow rate of 0.1 m3/min/t (0.1 cfm/bu) in on-farm grain storage structures. At this airflow rate a significant amount of time is required to move a cooling front completely through a bin. The desired grain temperature andprevailing weather conditions will have a significant effect on required fan...

Shelled yellow dent corn samples were conditioned to three moisture content levels (12%, 15%, and 18% w.b.) and mixed with a prescribed amount of broken corn particles of known size (geometric mean diameter of 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, and 4.0 mm) and concentration (2.5%, 5.0%, and 7.5% by weight) levels. The initial bulk density and grain compaction und...

One avenue for overcoming the economic challenges associated with the production of ethanol from renewable resources is to reduce the cost of the biomass feedstock. The balance between storage costs and benefits depend on the storage method and composition changes of individual stover fractions. Corn stover from bales stored inside and outside of a...

Corn stover was fractionated into three fractions: cobs, stalks, and leaves and husks. The fractions were dried and ground through a 2 mm screen. Samples of the three fractions and whole corn stover with and without NaOH pretreatment were subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis in order to determine the effect of fractionation on glucose production. The...

A study was conducted to estimate the degree of load asymmetry in a bin with non-axial internal inserts. Internal inserts in the form of an annulus segment were attached to the wall, and their influence on vertical wall loads during centric filling and discharge in a model bin were measured. Wall and floor loads were measured in a corrugated-wall m...

The development of a diverse, modular and portable system to accurately measure and record field operations is required to effectively bring identity preservation of crops to all farms and farmers. A demonstration system has been built based on a worldwide standard communications protocol and was evaluated for its ability to efficiently measure a v...

Mild solvent extraction (MSE) is an extractive process that has been previously used to directly convert coal to liquid products, gases, and solid chars. The MSE of white oak flour was investigated at three temperatures 300, 350, and 425 ºC and of red oak particles at a single temperature, 350 ºC. For white oak, the intermediate temperature of 350...

These proceedings contain nearly 200 keynote, oral and poster papers and contributions highlighting the work on the pests and diseases that cause spoilage, adverse health effects and crop losses after harvest, and discussing new techniques for safe, effective and environmentally friendly management of stored commodities. The contents cover the futu...

An axisymmetric finite-element model was developed that predicts the heat, mass, and momentum transfer that occurred in upright corrugated steel storage structures due to conduction, diffusion, and natural convection using realistic boundary conditions. Weather data that included hourly total solar radiation, wind speed, ambient temperature, and re...

Generally it is recommended that wheat be stored in a temperature range of 0 - 15 C° to maintain quality and prevent mold growth. In the mid-south region of the U.S., wheat is often harvested at temperatures in the 20 – 30 °C range requiring the grain to be aerated for safe storage. Thirty years of weather were examined for Lexington, KY and it was...

Experimental trials were carried out to evaluate the technical feasibility of reconditioning overly dry corn and soybeans to optimal market and processing moisture contents. Data obtained from experimental trials were used to validate an aeration simulation model. This model was used to evaluate the feasibility of reconditioning soybeans and corn....

Dryers are rated based on the average moisture content, with no consideration to the range in single-kernel moisture contents. The moisture content variation in lots of corn dried in three commercial dryer types was measured along with the grain quality (as indicated by the percentage of stress-cracked kernels). Corn exiting a high-temperature drye...

Recorded data from weather stations in 11 southern states were used to determine the optimum initial activation temperatures for immediate cooling of corn that is stored after harvest. Hours of temperature accumulation in September and October that were below 12.8 and 15.6°C (55 and 60 °F),levels that often are recommended for fall cooling of hard...

Increasing the capacity of existing continuous-flow corn dryers, without affecting grain quality, is physically and economically feasible by preheating the corn before it enters the dryer. This premise was tested successfully at a commercial site in the midwestern U.S. Corn was preheated in a hopper-bottom wet-holding bin to 25-35°C, resulting in a...

Previous research has shown that the variance in the moisture content of individual maize kernels is significant at harvest. In this series of three papers, the stochastic nature of the moisture content of maize before and after drying is explored. Part 1 presents experimental data of the distribution of moisture content of maize kernels in samples...

The formation of tobacco specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) in various tobaccos has become a topic of importance in recent years. The significant formation of TSNAs in burley tobacco occurs after the yellowing phase of curing and is dependent on several factors, notably the fertility level during growth and the curing environment during the browning and...

An axisymmetric finite element model was developed that takes into account the heat, mass, and momentum transfer that occurs in upright corrugated steel storage structures due to conduction, diffusion, and natural convection. Periods of aeration, dry matter loss distribution, and maize weevil density in corn were estimated. Heat and mass balances w...

Thesis (M.S.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Agricultural Engineering, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97).