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Written by Anna Strom
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Today, January 20, Bio4Energy is featured alongside key players in  Bio4Energy was featured along with key Swedish energy players in a Dagens Industri Future Energy newspaper insert. Photo by Bio4Energy.
the Swedish energy sector in the Swedish daily Dagens Industri, in
its Future Energy insert, under the heading “Green Gold to Replace Fossil Oil”.
B4E teamed up with Umeå University, the B4E lead partner in northern Sweden, and with highly talented researchers of its Chemical Biological Centre, to spread the message about the way in which B4E intends to make a substantial contribution towards creating sustainable biorefinery based on forest-sourced materials or organic waste.
“We have drawn together top-qualified researcher and leading companies in green technology”, Stellan Marklund said in the Future Energy insert of the 90 scientists and some 20 companies that make up B4E. They are spread across northern and central Sweden at Umeå University, Luleå University of Technology, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the research institutes Innventia and the Energy Technology Center at Piteå.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 21 January 2012 23:20 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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A Bio4Energy-led research project to seek out the most cost-efficient  Bio4Energy scientist Joakim Lundgren will be leading a study to identify sites for biofuels' production in Sweden. Photo by Anna Strom©.
sites in Sweden for second-generation biofuels’ production could kick off last month as the Swedish Knowledge Centre for Renewable Transportation Fuels, f3, decided to back it by almost SEK2 million.
As a first leg, the scientists behind it will develop a theoretical model to guide policy makers as they endeavour to match the availability of raw materials for biorefinery—woody biomass or organic waste—with parameters such as availability of land, cost of construction and production, plus ease of access for industry and environmental impacts. This first step will also entail constructing scenarios—snapshots of three likely futures for biofuels’ development in Sweden—based on variables ranging from energy prices, demand for biomass and transport fuels to assumed effects of policies governing the industry.
In Sweden, “full-scale biorefinery (plants in which) to produce biofuels are next to none”, according to project leader Joakim Lundgren of the energy sciences’ division of Luleå University of Technology (LTU) in northern Sweden. |
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Last Updated on Monday, 09 January 2012 16:42 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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A year in the making, Bio4Energy wants to thank all of its followers in 2011.  Bio4Energy designs tools and methods for making biofuels and 'green' chemicals from forest-sourced materials. The snap is of a forest in the Swedish part of the boreal belt. Photo by courtesy of Umeå University.
So far the B4E members have been busy building a research environment in bioenergy and biorefinery which links up three universities in northern Sweden, over 20 industrial partners and a handful of research institutes.
This year has seen plans for new research projects being drawn up by the seven B4E platforms dealing with forest-sourced feedstock, thermochemistry, biochemistry and process integration, as well those concerned with pretreatment and fractionation of raw materials, catalysis and separation, or environmental checks and balances.
Further, B4E has liaised with EU and Swedish authorities to spread the word about the potential embedded in the development of sustainable biorefinery based on non-food raw materials, mainly forest-sourced feedstock in the case of B4E, and seen several new cooperations take root.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 December 2011 18:55 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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As signaled, we publish a round up and presentations of biorefinery development or 'pilot' units in northern Sweden, gleaned from a talks at a meeting 1 December of scientists and representatives of biorefinery industry at Örnsköldsvik, given by Bio4Energy and the Processum Biorefinery Initiative.
Pilot facility for production of biomass from algae at Umeå, Sweden
 Franscesco Gentili talks up Umeå pilot facilities for biorefinery of algae. Photo by Bio4Energy.Project leader Francesco Gentili of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences said the installation would be used to produce a about a kilogramme per day worth of algae-based biomass suitable for making fertilizers, biofuels, bio-based plastics or fish meal. Gentili said production would imply “closing the chain” in terms of removing unwanted emissions to the environment, including gases thought to spur climate change, such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
“It can remove CO2 and NOx, and heavy metals”, he mused. The petroleum company “Preem wants to test the product in its biorefinery” to make biodiesel, said Gentili with reference to a certain line of testing at the pilot installation.
“We have to lower costs so as to show that we can produce (products and be competitive) in northern Sweden”, he said.
Attachments:
 Algae pilot installation at Umeå, December 2011 | 1005 Kb |
| MoRe Research pilot installations at Örnsköldsvik, December 2011 | 333 Kb |
| Roasting to make green coal: Umeå pilot facilities, December 2011 | 1284 Kb |
| ETC pilot facilities at Piteå, December 2011 | 594 Kb |
| Processum pilot park at Örnsköldsvik, December 2011 | 681 Kb |
| Spinning pilot installation at Domsjö, Örnsköldsvik, December 2011 | 76 Kb |
| Torrefaction and drying pilot installations at Umeå, December 2011 | 758 Kb |
| Wood chipper pilot facilities, MIUN, December 2011 | 164 Kb |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 29 December 2011 20:15 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Linking up northern Sweden's biorefinery development facilities could  Clas Engström, Stellan Marklund and Västernorrland County Governor Bo Källstrand inaugurate the bioreactor BioBo at MoRe Research in northern Sweden. Photo by Bio4Energy.
produce a "win-win situation" for industry and academia and spur
innovation, a workshop in Sweden for industry people and bioenergy scientists have heard.
If adequately coordinated and explained, the cluster of test sites in northern Sweden could serve as a resource for researchers in Sweden and beyond, according to Clas Engström, Processum Biorefinergy Initiative CEO, and Bio4Energy programme manager Stellan Marklund.
“What is unique about northern Sweden”, Marklund asked rethorically, sweeping his gaze over the participants of the joint meeting by B4E and Processum at Örnsköldsvik.
“It is those test sites (which) industry can use”, just as can biorefinery and bioenergy researchers, he said;
“If we join together we can create a win-win situation… (that can spur) innovation and put the technologies to good use for society. |
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Last Updated on Thursday, 08 December 2011 13:07 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Bioenergy scientists in northern Sweden are about to take a next step in  Bio4Energy scientists Leif Jönsson and Jyri-Pekka Mikkola inspect pilot facilities at B4E member firm SEKAB at Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. Photo by courtesy of Umeå University.
developing one of the world’s leading research environments in biorefinery by linking up with pulp and paper makers, forestry operators and their processing industries, as well as a biorefinery umbrella organisation in biorefinery research and innovation.
December 1 at Örnsköldsvik, Sweden, researchers in Bio4Energy from universities at Luleå and Umeå, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, will be hosting a meeting for north Sweden’s paper and pulp, forestry and biorefinery industries, together with the Processum Biorefinery Initiative.
This organisation runs research and development activities for its 21 industrial member firms in biorefinery of forest-sourced materials. Notably Processum is setting up pilot facilities at Örnsköldsvik by which to test and refine raw materials—generally biomass or waste streams from forestry operations, or other organic waste—with a view to make biofuels or “green” chemicals. Processum also plays host to a state-sponsored ‘Biorefinery of the Future’ project to bring research on bioenergy and
biorefinery to industry. B4E industrial partner SEKAB has summarised the Processum mandate.
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Last Updated on Monday, 05 December 2011 11:57 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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A number of Bio4Energy scientists, and three of its industrial partners,  Per Gardeström (right) won a grant to study the lives of mitochondria in leaves. Photographed with Stellan Marklund. Photo by Bio4Energy.
have won grants to pay for future research and awards for excellence
respectively. Two Swedish research funding bodies, Formas and the Swedish Research Council, provided the grants to four professors and several associated colleagues active across the B4E partner universities.
As regards the industrial partners, Biofuels maker Domsjö Fabriker, and Smurfit Kappa, the international pulp and paper group, won awards from RISI, a European industry body. These were presented in Brussels, Belgium, 15 November. Meanwhile, Chemrec, producing bioDME diesel fuel from a waste product of forestry operations, made an international listing of companies seen as forerunners in the development of technologies with a low environmental impact.
Among the B4E researchers granted funding, Per Gardeström and Leif Jönsson, of the B4E Feedstock and Biochemical Platforms, both affiliated with Umeå University in northern Sweden, each received just over two million Swedish kronor (€220,000) from the Swedish Research Council. |
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 22 November 2011 11:25 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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 Jyri-Pekka Mikkola of Bio4Energy said that excess carbon dioxide should be turned into chemicals and fuels. Photo by Anna Strom©.A senior scientist on Bio4Energy’s Catalysis and Separation Platform has said that large-scale underground storage of carbon dioxide may have unintended consequences and should be avoided, suggesting instead that methods should be invented to capture and turn C02 into fuels and chemicals.
“I think it is a very dangerous option, storing large amounts (of C02 underground)”, Jyri-Pekka Mikkola told a seminar celebrating research by the Umeå University (UmU) Chemical Biological Centre. A professor of technical chemistry at UmU, in northern Sweden, Mikkola was referring to the ongoing debate on whether carbon capture and storage should be implemented on a large scale as one leg of a future international strategy to counter global warming by cutting greenhouse gases.
“We should make chemicals and fuels out of (the C02)”, he said, adding that applications could be organic carbonates and biodegradable plastics.
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Last Updated on Monday, 09 January 2012 16:09 |
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