1Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tamil Nadu United States
2Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Kalyani Government Engineering College, West Bengal, India
3Department of Biochemistry, GBPUA & T, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India
*Corresponding author: avedanandaray@gmail.com (ORCID ID: 0000-0002-4677-5771)
Online published on 7 April, 2021.
Biochar is a charred final product by the pyrolysis of biomass. In this work, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra of various agricultural by-products (Pine needles, Rice husk, and grinded wheat straw, Bamboo leaves) derived carbonaceous biochars were investigated. The efficacy of FTIR spectra as a simple and rapid method for bio-physical characterization had been explored. The FTIR information was also discussed for explaining the biochar formation process. Results indicated the feasibility of FTIR in rapid and non-destructive biochar measurements for quality and production. Digital image processing has been used to identify the cell walls of the SEM images by using several filters and image histograms of all the SEM images are also generated. All the algorithms are used after careful consideration of noise removal using wiener filter to each of the images.
•Agricultural by-products can be used as feedstock materials to produce biochar.
•With pyrolysis, significant changes in chemical, physical, and structural can easily be revealed by FTIR spectra and SEM of biomass and biochar samples.
•The proposed image processing method can detect the cell walls of SEM images after efficiently removing the noise from the original gray-scale images.
Biochar, Agricultural by-products, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscopy, Image processing
