BiomassID app for iPhone and iPad

BiomassID is application that can be used to analyze photos of biomass feedstock in order to classify the biomass by its type. BiomassID can distinguish between four types of biomass: wheat stalks, municipal waste, corn stalks, and park wood. The quality of biomass can be inferred at a coarse level from the type of biomass. For each type of biomass, several average values that indicate the quality are presented. They include the (net and gross) calorific value, the moisture content, the ash content, the concentration of Carbon, the concentration of Oxygen, among others. These values are taken from the public database ECN Phyllis 2 - https://www.ecn.nl/phyllis2/.

Biomass quality assessment is of great importance when one in the biomass industry needs to produce another energy product, such as biofuel or bioenergy, for instance. Usually, the biomass quality is determined using expensive devices, such as mass spectrometers, or complex chemical tests that may need several days to complete. Because of the high costs of such methods, people tend to forsake biomass quality assessment and move on to directly produce bioproducts from any kind of biomass. BiomassID is a cheap and fast solution for biomass type identification.

Behind BiomassID is an algorithm based on Artificial Intelligence. The algorithm analyzes the texture of the biomass and decides its type by comparing it with a set images representing various types of biomass. The algorithm is trained such that it can identify the biomass type with an accuracy of about 90% in 4-5 seconds.

The app is designed to be very simple to use. It can be described in two basic actions. First, a photo must be selected from the camera or from the device library. Second, the selected photo is analyzed with the tap of a button.