Biomass has long been recognized as a potential sustainable source of mixed sugars for fermentation to fuels and other bio-based products.  However, biofuels produced by today’s technology are not cost competitive, due to the inefficiency of the chemical and enzymatic conversion techniques used in the processes.  The improvement of these processes undoubtedly relies on further understanding of the fundamental structure of the plant biomass.  The plant cell walls are a complex material on the nanometer scale. Advanced characterization techniques are required to allow us to investigate the plant cell wall structure with high structural and chemical resolution.  To accomplish this task, we are developing and applying microscopic and spectroscopic tools, consisting of both nonlinear optical and spectroscopic microscopy, to enable investigating of the plant cell wall constituents and their changes during conversion processes.  Preliminary results have demonstrated that it is feasible to map the structure and chemistry of plant cell walls at the submicron scale using an integrated imaging system.

This work has been authored by an employee or employees of the Midwest Research Institute under Contract No. DE-AC36-99GO10337 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes.