A systematic evaluation of biomethane production from sugarcane trash pretreated by different methods.

Biomethane production was systematically evaluated with sugarcane trash pretreated by liquid hot water (LHW), dilute acid (DA) and KOH solutions. Multiple linear regression analysis identified glucan in pretreated solid residue as well as C5 sugars and acetic acid in pretreatment hydrolysate as the key parameters affecting biomethane potentials. Moreover, biomethane production was best simulated using Chen & Hashimoto model with a predicted highest methane yield of 187 mL/g initial total solids (TS) based on LHW (130 °C for 15 min) and KOH (10% on trash, 150 °C for 60 min) pretreatments. KOH pretreatment led to a biomethane yield of 167 mL/g initial TS at day 25, 82%, 34% and 33% higher than those achieved with untreated and pretreated trash samples with optimal LHW and DA conditions, respectively. This study led to the identification of best kinetic model and pretreatment condition for biomethane production from sugarcane trash through a systematic evaluation.

Experimental dataset for optimising the freight rail operations.

The freight rail systems have an essential role to play in transporting the commodities between the delivery and collection points at different locations such as farms, factories and mills. The fright transport system uses a daily schedule of train runs to meet the needs of both the harvesters and the mills (An Integrated Approach to Optimise Cane Rail Operations (M. Masoud, E. Kozan, G. Kent, Liu, Shi Qiang, 2016b) [1]). Producing an efficient daily schedule to optimise the rail operations requires integration of the main elements of harvesting, transporting and milling in the value chain of the Australian agriculture industry. The data utilised in this research involve four main tables: sidings, harvesters, sectional rail network and trains. The utilised data were collected from Australian sugar mills as a real application. Operations Research techniques such as metaheuristic and constraint programming are used to produce the optimised solutions in an analytical way.