Sunday, May 3, 2009
8-10
Potential for Biofuel and Animal Feed Production from Native Prairie Grasslands
In order to investigate the feasibility of using native prairie grasses as a biofuel feedstock and animal feed, a number of different samples from fields of differing plant composition were harvested. Ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX) pretreatment followed by either enzymatic hydrolysis or in vitro rumen digestibility were performed on these samples in order to determine their value as both a biofuel feedstock and an animal feed compared to untreated material. Because the high diversity in plant species, while environmentally beneficial, may result in widely different optimal pretreatment conditions from one field to the next, a range of pretreatment conditions was tested and the effect on both hydrolysis and digestibility was investigated for each field and compared.