Comprehensive rheological characterization of chopped and ground switchgrass

<b>Background:</b> In this work the impact of grinding and chopping on the rheological properties of four switchgrass materials (<i>panicum virgatum</i>) is investigated, comparing physical characterization to previously published feeding performance in bulk equipment in a high-tonnage facility, in which chopped materials exhibited dramatically better handling performance than corresponding ground materials. <b>Results:</b> Physical characterization included sieve analysis, automated digital image analysis of particle size and shape distributions, microscopy of particle microstructure, shear tests using two different sizes of ring shear testers, flow tests in a custom hopper with an adjustable outlet, and uniaxial compression and spring back tests. Shear tests failed to demonstrate consistent statistically significant differences between the shear strengths of the chopped and ground materials subjected to uniaxial compression. However, in laboratory-scale hopper flow tests, the chopped materials exhibited substantially better flow performance than the ground materials, in agreement with the previously published bulk handling tests. <b>Conclusion:</b> Chopped switchgrass materials exhibit substantially better flowability properties in large-scale bulk equipment and in laboratory-scale hopper feeding tests; however, shear tests were not able to reliably predict the flowability properties of bulk switchgrass particles, likely because uniaxial-compression shear tests do not capture the effects of compressibility and elasticity in multi-dimensional flow streams.