Straws are agricultural residues that can be used to produce biomethane by anaerobic digestion. The methane yield of rice straw is lower than other straws. Steam explosion was investigated as a pretreatment to increase methane production. Pretreatment conditions with varying reaction times (12–30 min) and maximum temperatures (162–240 °C) were applied. The pretreated material was characterized for its composition and thermal and morphological properties. When the steam explosion was performed with a moderate severity parameter of S₀ = 4.1 min, the methane yield was increased by 32% compared to untreated rice straw. This study shows that a harsher pretreatment at S₀ > 4.3 min causes a drastic reduction of methane yield because inert condensation products are formed from hemicelluloses.

Innovative methods were used to determine both sorption and drying data at temperatures typically found in the handling of agricultural products. A robust sorption measurement system using multiple microbalances and a high precision through flow laboratory dryer, both with continuous data acquisition, were employed as the basis for a water vapor deficit based approach in modeling the sorption and drying behavior of high oleic sunflower seeds. A coherent set of data for sorption (Temperature T = 25–50 °C, water activity a_w = 0.10–0.95) and for drying (T = 30–90 °C, humidity of the drying air x = 0.010–0.020 kg·kg⁻¹) was recorded for freshly harvested material. A generalized single-layer drying model was developed and validated (R² = 0.99, MAPE = 8.3%). An analytical solution for predicting effective diffusion coefficients was also generated (R² = 0.976, MAPE of 6.33%). The water vapor pressure deficit-based approach allows for an easy integration of meaningful parameters recorded during drying while maintaining low complexity of the underlying equations in order for embedded microcontrollers with limited processing power to be integrated in current agro-industrial applications.