Anatomical fraction segmentation in the biomass bales

According to the Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), creating a robust next-generation domestic bioenergy industry is an essential pathway for providing sustainable renewable energy alternatives. Using non-food feedstocks, like corn-stover and forest residue, in the biorefineries doesn't affect the food supply chain. In the commercial-scale bioenergy operations, a significant development in the technological advancements is required to determine the biomass feedstock quality at the preprocessing stage. The penetrating ability of the x-rays helps study the big biomass bales, but the feedstock heterogeneity—physical size, shape, and chemical composition—poses a significant challenge during milling, conveyance, feeding, and biofuel conversion processes. The inherent complexity introduced during harvesting and bailing makes the reconstruction and interpretation of baled biomass materials from x-ray data time consuming, laborious, and expensive. The presence of similar low-dense materials showed a small contrast difference in the x-ray images, which makes the characterization based on the x-ray attenuation values not promising. This paper focuses on using the shape and texture properties extracted with image processing techniques to characterize the different tissue samples in the biomass bales.