Papers by Nana Darkwah Baah
National Science Foundation - Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program Uni... more National Science Foundation - Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program United Sorghum Checkoff Program
Journal of Developments in Sustainable Agriculture, 2009
Ghana’s agricultural sector is heavily dependent on rainfall, but the rainfall pattern is erratic... more Ghana’s agricultural sector is heavily dependent on rainfall, but the rainfall pattern is erratic, making the sector a high-risk venture for many investors. The Upper West Region annually experiences a short rainy season and a relatively long dry season (i.e., October to April). Irrigation is therefore essential for enhancement of agricultural production. A number of earth embankments have been constructed as dams and dugouts have been excavated throughout the region to create water reservoirs for irrigation, especially for dry season farming. However, the irrigation facilities are beset with problems. This paper presents a problem structure analysis of the irrigation systems in the region with the aim of proposing a feasible and sustainable scheme of irrigation
Renewable Energy, 2019
Sweet sorghum, a C 4 plant, is known to be a unique, versatile, and potential energy crop that ca... more Sweet sorghum, a C 4 plant, is known to be a unique, versatile, and potential energy crop that can be separated into starchy grains, soluble sugar juice, and lignocellulosic biomass. The fermentable sugars in the juice (53-85% sucrose, 9-33% glucose, and 6-21% fructose) can be directly fermented into ethanol. The grain is primarily starch (62-75%), which can be hydrolyzed and fermented into ethanol. The bagasse, a fibrous lignocellulosic material, can be used to produce cellulosic ethanol, heat and/or power co-generation. In this review, the potential of sweet sorghum for bioenergy production (of various forms) using recently developed cultivars with improved agronomic performance was discussed. In addition, sweet sorghum was compared with other starch, sugar, and lignocellulosic feedstocks. Studies have been conducted on alternative pathways to convert whole sweet sorghum stalks and bagasse into bioenergy. However, very little review of the techno-economic analysis of bioenergy production and co-products from sweet sorghum has been published. The aim of this research was to review the current knowledge of agronomic requirement for cultivating sweet sorghum, the productivity of recently developed cultivars for bioenergy production, and pathways of converting sweet sorghum crop into bioenergy as well as the techno-economic feasibility of using sweet sorghum for bioenergy.
Processes, 2019
Sweet sorghum juice, a potential bioethanol feedstock, can be incorporated into the dry-grind eth... more Sweet sorghum juice, a potential bioethanol feedstock, can be incorporated into the dry-grind ethanol process to improve sugar utilization efficiency, thereby enhancing ethanol yields. The juice is normally obtained by pressing the stalk through roller mills in tandem. Juice extraction by this process is known to be labor intensive, less efficient, and susceptible to considerable fermentable sugar loss due to microbial activities when stored at room temperature. Sweet sorghum juice extraction via diffusion has recently been proposed to improve sugar recovery efficiency. In this study, extraction kinetics based on the optimized diffusion parameters (8% grain loading, 85 °C, and 120 min) were determined to describe the mass transfer of sugars in sweet sorghum biomass during the diffusion process. Diffusion parameters obtained from previous studies were used to extract free sugars and convert them into ethanol using granular starch hydrolyzing enzymes (GSHE) and traditional enzymes. Et...
Industrial Crops and Products, 2018
The objective of this research was to enhance the production of ethanol from grain sorghum flour ... more The objective of this research was to enhance the production of ethanol from grain sorghum flour and sweet sorghum juice using very high gravity (VHG) fermentation. Various amounts of grain sorghum flour were combined with different concentrations of sweet sorghum juice to form (≈33 g/100 mL) mashes. Mashes were fermented to produce ethanol with and without urea supplementation via simultaneous saccharification and fermentation process. Based on one-way ANOVA results, all treatment mixtures had a significant effect on ethanol production and efficiency (P < 0.05). It is hypothesized that the combination of inoculation size (10 9 cells/ml), fermentation temperature (30°C) and 16 mM urea supplementation had a synergistic effect on ethanol production. Free amino nitrogen consumption dynamics and distiller's dried grains with soluble results suggested that assimilable nitrogen was made available for yeast growth and metabolism. Results showed that 20.25% (v/v) of ethanol and up to 96% fermentation efficiency could be obtained from ≈ 33% (w/v) dissolved solids. Results also showed that the optimum sugar ratio of grain sorghum and sweet sorghum juice (18% sugar) for VHG fermentation is 1-1 (sugar to sugar).
Industrial Crops and Products, 2016
Sweet sorghum stores a high concentration of soluble sugars in its stalk and produces grain in th... more Sweet sorghum stores a high concentration of soluble sugars in its stalk and produces grain in the panicle. This grain represents a significant amount of starch. The ethanol industry currently uses sugarcane processing methods for sweet sorghum; however, sweet sorghum differs from sugarcane in that sweet sorghum produces significant quantities of grain which is predominantly starch. The objective of this research was to increase ethanol production from sweet sorghum by fully utilizing all fermentable sugars which include starch in the grain and nonstructural carbohydrates in the stalk. The diffusion process was utilized to extract fermentable sugars and nonstructural carbohydrates from chopped sweet sorghum biomass and grains. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied in order to optimize diffusion conditions and to explore effects of diffusion time, diffusion temperature, ratio of sweet sorghum grain to total biomass on starch-to-sugar efficiency, and total sugar recovery from sweet sorghum. RSM results showed that starch conversion efficiency and sugar recovery efficiency of 96% and 98.5%, respectively, were achieved at an optimized time of 114.9 minutes, temperature of 95 °C, and 22% grain loading.
International Journal of Agricultural and Biological Engineering
ABSTRACT
Journal of Geochemical Exploration, 1999
Multi-element geochemical data can be effectively interpreted through the application of multivar... more Multi-element geochemical data can be effectively interpreted through the application of multivariate statistical techniques, imaging methods and integration with digital topographic information. These techniques have been applied to a suite of 1665 soil samples collected in a sampling program from the central Sumatra area of Indonesia. The selected samples were analyzed for Au,
Uploads
Papers by Nana Darkwah Baah