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The aim of the study was to investigate the changes in ultimate, proximate analysis, and calorific properties of Miscanthus x giganteus with three types of planting materials (two rhizomes - R1 and R2 - and one seedling - S) and three ash fertiliser treatments (P0, P2, and P5) were included in the study. The research further examined their effects on crop yield, stem height and various chemical properties. The results showed that the maximum yield was obtained with the R1 x P2 plant type, while the minimum yield was recorded with the R2 x P2 plant type. In addition, the greatest average stem height (3.34 m) was recorded for the R2 x P5 plant type. Significant differences were also found in the chemical components between the plant types and treatments. For example, the highest ash content of 2.25% was found in plant type 'S' x P5, while the highest coke content of 14.48 % was found in plant type R1 x P5. The statistical analysis confirmed that planting material and ash fertilisation had significant influence on the physicochemical properties of Miscanthus x giganteus. This consequently affects the calorific value, with the average higher and lower heating value being 18.32 and 17.04 MJ/kg, respectively. The neural regression network models showed robust predictive performance for the higher heating value and lower heating value, with low chi-square values, X², and high coefficients of determination, R². [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this research is to evaluate how fertilisation with different amounts of municipal sewage sludge, a by-product of wastewater treatment, affects the yield and energetic properties of Miscanthus biomass. The influence of municipal sewage sludge on the energy properties of Miscanthus was analysed in four dosages, namely: 0 t/ha DM, 1.66 t/ha DM, 3.32 t/ha DM and 6.64 t/ha DM. The study showed that the highest amount of municipal sewage sludge did not negatively affect the analysed energy properties of Miscanthus in any way. The yields were almost the same at all dosage of municipal sewage sludge application at around 32 t/ha, the higher calorific value was 18.90 MJ/kg at all dosage of municipal sewage sludge application, coke and carbon, as one of the more important parameters for direct combustion, also remained statistically unchanged. The composition of lignocellulose also showed no significant differences in relation to fertilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of using structural analysis parameters for estimating the higher heating value (HHV) of biomass by obtaining information on the composition of cellulose, lignin, and hemicellulose. To achieve this goal, several nonlinear mathematical models were developed, including polynomials, support vector machines (SVMs), random forest regression (RFR) and artificial neural networks (ANN) for predicting HHV. The performed statistical analysis "goodness of fit" showed that the ANN model has the best performance in terms of coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.90) and the lowest level of model error for the parameters X2 (0.25), RMSE (0.50), and MPE (2.22). Thus, the ANN model was identified as the most appropriate model for determining the HHV of different biomasses based on the specified input parameters. In conclusion, the results of this study demonstrate the potential of using structural analysis parameters as input for HHV modeling, which is a promising approach for the field of biomass energy production. The development of the model ANN and the comparative analysis of the different models provide important insights for future research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]