Abstract
Macaw palm has been stood out as a raw material for the production of bioenergy, because it has high productivity of oil and less emission of polluting waste during combustion, meeting the worldwide demand for sustainable energy sources. The aims of this research were the evaluation of response of the biologic activity measured by the optical technique of the biospeckle laser applied to macaw palm fruits at different maturity weeks and develop a classifier in function of biologic activity to determine the harvest period related with oil content in the fruits. To perform the experiment, 10 weeks fruits different maturity stages were evaluated. The biospeckle laser images were obtained by illuminating the epicarp of each fruit. The biological activity was quantified by absolute value of difference algorithm applied to biospeckle images. A neural network was developed to classify the fruits which were closer to harvest in function of biologic activity. Biologic activity showed a significant linear ratio (R2 = 0.913) with the maturation of fruits. Classification results have shown that fruits from 59th week after flowering are ideal for harvest and present the highest oil levels. Key words: Biologic activity, optical sensors, maturity, oil content.
Highlights
Brazil has stood out in the worldwide energy scenario, being considered to be one of the biggest producers and consumers of biodiesel
The aims of this research were the evaluation of response of the biologic activity measured by the optical technique of the biospeckle laser applied to macaw palm fruits at different maturity weeks and develop a classifier in function of biologic activity to determine the harvest period related with oil content in the fruits
R2 of 0.9127 for biologic activity adjustment in the epicarp shows that biospeckle laser has the capacity of being an efficient technique in pointing out maturity level, which can be applied directly to the peel of macaw palm fruit
Summary
Brazil has stood out in the worldwide energy scenario, being considered to be one of the biggest producers and consumers of biodiesel. Soybeans are the main source of biodiesel production, covering 74% of the raw material demand, corresponding to the production of 2.2 million m3 (ANP, 2014). The diversification of the raw materials used for the production of biodiesel is important for the continuous increase of the Brazilian bioenergy sector. In this context, the macaw palm stands out because of the high production potential of oil from its fruits (Conceição et al, 2016), and the possibility to be used in a consortium with other species into agrosilvopastoral systems (Henderson et al, 1995; Viana et al, 2011). The estimate of oil productivity in the mesocarp is of 5000 kg.ha-1 palm-kernel type, needed for biodiesel production, and of 1400 kg.ha-1 of oil in the kernel is lauryl type, used in cosmetics (Clement et al, 2005; Barreto et al, 2016)
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