Morphologic features and thermal characteristics of nine cotton biomass byproducts

Authors: He, Zhongqi; Nam, Sunghyun; Tewolde, Haile; Ford, Catrina; DHANDAPANI, RENUKA - Cotton, Inc; BARRETTO, ROSELLE - Kansas State University; WANG, DONGHAI - Kansas State University

Submitted to: Biomass
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/18/2025
Publication Date: 2/25/2025
Citation: He, Z., Nam, S., Tewolde, H., Ford, C.V., Dhandapani, R., Barretto, R., Wang, D. 2025. Morphologic features and thermal characteristics of nine cotton biomass byproducts. Biomass. 5(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/biomass5010012.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/biomass5010012

Interpretive Summary: Every year, million tons of cotton biomass wastes are generated worldwide. Thus, valorization of these cotton biomass byproducts for value-added products and alternative renewable energy source is well justified for global researchers’ attention and dedication. Direct combustion, thermochemical conversion, biochemical processes, and agrochemical conversion are such valorization strategies. Chemical composition, morphological features and thermal characteristics of the biomass raw materials are among the key parameters of these conversion approaches. Thus, this work systematically characterized and compared the morphology and thermal properties of nine cotton biomass byproducts collected from fields and post-harvest processing. The yielded basic morphological and thermal properties of the cotton biomass byproducts increased the knowledge of their basic chemistry, which would be valuable for improving recycling strategies and could also provide insight for the development of new value-added products or applications.

Technical Abstract: Utilization of agricultural byproducts left on the field or accumulated in the post-harvest processing for biomaterials and energy resources is a good solution putting forward for both biomass waste management and meeting the renewable energy requirement. Cotton biomass residues consist of an important portion of the agricultural byproducts. In this work, we systematically analyzed and compared the morphology and thermal properties of nine cotton biomass by-products. The unique tubular and/or porous morphology of some samples (e. g., main stems, branch stems, and petioles) implied their structural advantage in development of electric super-capacitors and pollutant absorbents. The higher heating values of the nine samples ranged be-tween 17 and 20 MJ kg-1, higher than some of other common agricultural byproducts (e.g., rich husk and sugarcane bagasse). The moisture content showed a positively correlation (p > 0.05) to the dehydration temperature of the differential scanning calorimetric plots. The residual char after thermogravimetric analysis could be separated into a high-yield cluster (34.4-26.6%) of leaf blades, bracts/peduncles, burrs, defatted meal and petioles, and a low-yield cluster (20.5-13.6%) of main stems, branch stems, cotton gin waste and cottonseed hull. These observations and data were useful for better understanding of the fundamental chemistry of cotton biomass byproducts. The growing knowledge would be useful for improving their recycling strategies and may shed light for ex-ploration of new value-added products or applications differently from these cotton biomass byproducts for circular economy with a sustainable agriculture.