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This work examines how ash and the mineral elements in four bamboo culm growth stages (shoot, juvenile, mature and dead) can affect fuel conversion technology plants through slagging, fouling, and corrosion. 48 samples consisting of the shoot; juvenile; mature and dead culms were tested for ash content and ash mineral elements. The mean values of ash contents of the bamboo culm growth stages across the three ecological zones were from 0.93% to 2.11%. The contents were within the threshold approved in the EN standards EN 14775 ≥3%. The mean values of carbon across the culm growth stages ranged from 48.46% to 53.31%. Hydrogen among the bamboo culms ranged from 5.60 to 7.04%. Higher carbon and hydrogen contents lead to higher heating values. Nitrogen among the culm growth stages ranged from 0.31 to 0.79%. The concentration levels of N in the culms were within the threshold prescribed in the EN standards EN 15104 ≥ 1%. The mean Cu concentration of mature culms ranged from 0.89-1.31 ppm; Zn ranged from 2.74-3.25 ppm; As varies from 0.055 to 0.078 ppm; Ni ranges from 0.43-0.85 ppm and Cd in the mature bamboo culm ranged from 0.81 to 3.66 ppm. Amount the minor ash elementals calcium in the mature culm ranged from 16.70 to 26.49 ppm; potassium (K) from 0.42-2.45 ppm and Mg from Ca and Mg contents increases the melting point of ash K content lowers the melting poin of ash which can cause slagging. The concentrations of minor and heavy metals were below the standard set by EN 1496 1-2 and therefore may not cause problems to human health or slagging to combustion plants for the production of biofuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those who work with wood should have a basic knowledge of wood anatomy and chemistry so they can understand how different anatomical and chemical features influence wood properties and, in turn, how these properties contribute to different treatments and final wood utilization. However, little attempt has been made to map global research trends in wood anatomy and chemistry. This paper presents a bibliometric review of research trends in wood anatomy and chemistry to determine research trends and gaps in these research areas. A total of 183 publications on wood anatomy and chemistry from 1974 to 2023 were reviewed. The analysis was done with the VOSviewer software (version 1.6.13). The analysis focused on the bibliographic coupling of countries, co-authorship of authors, citation of documents, and co-occurrence of keywords, which were presented as network visualization maps. The findings revealed that the wood anatomy and chemistry publication trends, although not completely gradient, have been upwards since 2000. Countries including Germany, the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the Netherlands, China, Italy, Mexico, Spain, the Czech Republic, Canada, Australia, Chile, Finland, France, Sweden, and Japan had a great impact on this research area. It also became evident that African countries lag in this area of research. Only one data source - Scopus - was used. It has a wide coverage of publications from diverse areas and provides researchers with information on the most important academic literature in any specific scientific domain. Therefore, the representation of publications presented in this study is limited to only the Scopus data source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]