Challenges to analyse microbes in wood chips stock piles
Jämsén, Miia; Knuuttila, Kirsi (2016)
Jämsén, Miia
Knuuttila, Kirsi
Benet Ltd.
2016
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-67890-4-0
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-67890-4-0
Tiivistelmä
The wood material is practically always pre-treated when used in energy production. Typical pretreatment is chipping the wood in wood chips. Wood chip storage times vary from one day up to one year. There are many factors that are influencing in microbial activity in the wood chip storage. In this article the focus is in describing the challenges to analyse microbial population in wood chip storage piles. Furthermore, some results of microbial population in “fresh” and “old” storage are introduced. The learnings and results are based on the experimental research “Inhibition of microbial activities in the pile of energy wood chips during the storage” carried out in JAMK University of Applied Sciences in 2013-2015 and funded by the Foundation for Research of Natural Resources in Finland. In this article the focus is in challenges of microbial analyses of wood chip storage. One challenge was that there is no standard for the microbial sampling of wood chip microbes. In this research methods to take sample was developed. The microbe analyses themselves are time consuming and sensitive. Besides, it is important to manage contamination risk properly. Furthermore, many dublicates are needed. In quantitative analyses the scale of dilutions is large. Sampling and analysing are very much work and the results of the experiments are not necessary transferrable in different piles and different operational environment. In this experimental research, it was recognised that in the wood chip storages the number of colony formatting units correlates with the storage duration of wood chips. In the storage piles, there are present microbes, such as Aspergillus fumigatus and actinobacteria that are safety risk for people working with wood chips.