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Written by Anna Strom and Edouard Pesquet
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A multi-national research team of researchers in Bio4Energy has
been able to  Bio4Energy scientist Edouard Pesquet working in the lab at the Umeå Plant Science Centre, in northern Sweden. Photo by Kjell Olofsson, UPSC/Bio4Energy. demonstrate an important step in wood formation: that a part of plants only forms after the cells that make them up die. According to the research group leader, Edouard Pesquet of Umeå University, the finding is an important step in understanding the way in which wood is constructed and, in turn, can be taken apart in a way suitable for making bio-based products.
What Pesquet’s team at the Umeå Plant Science Centre has done, using a combination of techniques, is to trace the formation of lignin in the vessels through which water and nutrients are transported throughout two model plants.
Lignin is one of the two most prevalent polymers in plants, providing stiffness to their stems and leaves. In an article in the Advance Online version of the prestigious The Plant Cell scientific journal, the UPSC researchers show that, in the walls of the so-called xylem vessels, lignin only forms after the host cells “commit suicide”.
“The wood cell will kill itself and [together with other deceased cells] become a cylinder—the hydro-mineral sap is conducted in the void inside the wood vessels created by the cell suicide. Reinforcement of the conducting structure will then be made post mortem by enabling the lateral cell wall of the wood to lignify", explained the assistant professor Pesquet from his office at Umeå, Sweden.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 14 May 2013 16:08 |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Friday, 10 May 2013 14:21 |
Bio4Energy is publishing a special reportage made for Swedish  Robert Bergman, right, of Piteå Presents/Municipality of Piteå is one of those being drawn in the radio clip, below, on the city of Piteå's devotion to and reliance on the forest as a source of income, growth and development of "green" fuels and chemicals for the future. Photo by Bio4Energy.
public radio on challenges facing Piteå, a Swedish city traditionally carried by its access to forests and the raw materials that people take from them. Today, Piteå is home to biofuel demonstration facilities by which researchers, such as those on the B4E Thermochemical Platform, together with industry, have developed a near-zero-emission dimethyl ether from a byproduct of making pulp. According to the audio reportage, eight commercial freight trucks are being tested in operations across the country, filling up their tanks at four pioneer bioDME filling station.
B4E funds an "important" strand of research and development at the Energy Technology Centre at Piteå, according to its CEO, Magnus Marklund of B4E. There ETC researchers on the B4E Thermochemical Platform and colleagues have invented a method for turning woody residue from logging operations, such as stumps and bark, into fuels and bioenergy in a single step, using gasification technology. The main product is a high-quality synthesis gas which carries great promise, according to Marklund. He is set to present the ETC research and development actitivites to B4E researchers meeting at Umeå, Sweden, 16 May. |
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Written by Anna Strom and Leif J. Jönsson
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Tuesday, 16 April 2013 16:43 |
An efficient hybrid technology for producing bioethanol from  The Indian River Bioenergy Centre site, home to INEOS Bio's demonstration facilities at Vero Beach, Florida, U.S.A. Photo by courtesy of INEOS Bio.
lignocellulosic waste that implies a gasification step and a bacterial fermentation step, demonstrated in Florida, has stirred interest among Swedish “green” chemistry stakeholders meeting at a seminar in Stockholm last week.
Bio4Energy’s man at the ‘Forest Chemistry’ seminar, Leif J. Jönsson of Umeå University said the technology had apparent advantages and was flexible. Patented by biofuel maker INEOS Bio, it went right to the heart of B4E’s expertise, he said.
“Hybrid technology development requires competency in gasification and fermentation technology”, the UmU professor Jönsson said: “This is something that Bio4Energy is well placed to look at. This has relevance for [the B4E] Thermochemical and Biochemical Platforms”. |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Monday, 25 March 2013 18:11 |
Last week a conference in Sweden opened the Bio4Energy  Lindsay Ohlin, PhD, scored the 2013 Solander Biorefinery Award for the "best" student presentation of the Bio4Energy Graduate School opening conference. Photo by B4E.
Graduate School on the innovative use of biomass. At Skellefteå distinguished keynote speakers rubbed shoulders with student presenters, one of whom was singled out to receive a SEK20,000 (€2378) award for her "focused" talk on biogas scrubbing.
Former head of the Swedish Energy Agency, Tomas Kåberger of Chalmers University of Technology, 19 March joined the 40-strong gathering to share some of his considerable experience in energy systems and the policies and drivers needed to make them sustainable. B4E is publishing an audiovisual excerpt of his talk below. Jan Lagerström of the Swedish Forest Industries' Federation, for his part, described the industry's efforts to conceive of biomass-based innovations and its commitment to the research agenda of the European Forest Technology Platform.
Somewhere in between the keynote addesses, however, Lindsay Ohlin of Luleå University of Technology took the floor to tell some 30 PhD student colleagues and a few senior B4E members of her work to remove carbon dioxide (C02) and water from methane-based biogas intended for use as fuel. The two substances inherent to the renewable raw materials on which the gas was based brought down the “heat value” of the fuel: “We want to separate them out because they don’t burn”, Ohlin said. |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Thursday, 21 March 2013 17:33 |
An excellence centre drawing together the best brains in Swedish  Poplar plants in the Umeå Plant Science Centre greenhouse, a regular haunt of Berzelii Centre researchers. Photo by courtesy of the UPSC/Kjell Olofsson.
forest biotechnology and feedstock research, which 'wood development' branch is led by Bio4Energy scientists, has been given top marks by international evaluators.
The Berzelii Centre for Forest Biotechnology at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC), shared by Umeå University (UmU) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), has been ranked "one of the top forest biotechnology research establishments in the world”, according to the UPSC homepage, in an evaluation carried out for the Swedish Government Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA). Among other strong points, the evaluators put the centre’s success down to its “exceptional leadership”.
In charge of the UPSC Berzelii Centre’s Wood and Fiber Platform from 2007 to 2012, Björn Sundberg of the B4E Feedstock Platform in cooperation with UPSC chief Ove Nilsson and others paved the way for a rapid expansion of the centre’s research activities. According to B4E scientist Johannes Hanson their success lay in their using the funding money to create a flat-hierarchy structure in which just a few professors, in much the same way as researchers in middle management, where invited to put together small research groups. These were placed on an equal footing, said the UPSC associate professor Hanson. |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Friday, 15 March 2013 18:14 |
Tuesday 19 March Bio4Energy will mark the start of its Graduate  PhD students Qiuju Gao and Mar Edo do research to check pollutant emissions from biomass conversion into bioenergy products such as char, gas or oil. Here in front of a piece of GC-MS equipment at Umeå University that they use to perform their technical analyses. GC-MS is short for gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Photo by Bio4Energy.
School with a two-day conference at Skellefteå, Sweden. Some 30 doctoral students will be giving presentations, along with the former director general of the Swedish Energy Agency, Tomas Kåberger of Chalmers University of Technology and Jan Lagerström of Swedish Forest Industries' Federation, a Swedish forestry industry trade union.
The “best” PhD presentation will be awarded a 2013 Solander Biorefinery Award of 20,000 Swedish kroner (€2,393)—offered by the Solander Science Park at Piteå, Sweden—as an added spur and encouragement for the student to keep seeking new knowledge and integration with B4E industrial and academic networks, according to the B4E Graduate School coordinator Ulrika Rova. The student would also be invited to present his or her research at an Energy and Environmental Week conference, given annually at Piteå, in a bid to "acknowledge young researchers", the Luleå University of Technology assistant professor Rova said.
Tomas Kåberger, who chairs the Japan Renewable Energy Foundation, would come to share his considerable experience of what constitutes “a successful energy system”, with examples from Sweden and other countries; while the research director Jan Lagerström would outline future needs of the Swedish forestry industry in terms of research and development, Rova said.
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Written by Anna Strom
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013 17:08 |
This week a research technology support centre opened its doors  Marianne Sommarin of Umeå University and Johan Schnürer from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences inaugurate the universities' joint Swedish Metabolomics Centre. SMC facility manager Jonas Gullberg looks on. Photo by Anna Strom©.
in Sweden for researchers trying to understand the metabolome—defined as the full complement of products resulting from metabolic action in an organism, tissue or cell at a given physiological or developmental stage—whether this metabolic system be the human one or that of plants and trees.
Headed up by a senior Bio4Energy technician, the Swedish Metabolomics Centre is guaranteed five years worth of funding to cover the centre’s running costs thanks to a “substantial” grant from the Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation (KAW), a Swedish fund. The grant means that activities at the existing metabolomics’ facility at Umeå University (UmU), developed in collaboration with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) since 2002, can not go on, but also be expanded and infrastructure upgraded.
“Our ambition is to become national centre”, offering access to advanced research instrumentation and on-demand provision of services such as metabolomic analyses by the centre’s technicians and experts, said SMC facility manager Jonas Gullberg. Provision of training courses in using the technology or conferences relaying research results could also be envisaged, he said. |
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Written by Anna Strom
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013 12:48 |
In its third year of operation, the research environment Bio4Energy  Last year was the first in which Bio4Energy went full speed with its research and development and outreach activities. The article featured was published in a January 2012 excerpt to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri. Photo by Bio4Energy.
grew to include 171 researchers—48 women and 123 men—who published 95 peer-reviewed publications and made 14 applications in view of patenting innovations, some of which clear-cut research breakthroughs.
B4E also stepped out its outreach activities, giving a public conference together with external partners, as well as provided 18 more popular science events or publications directed at stakeholders in industry, policy makers, presumptive students, academia and others interested in biorefinery and bioenergy research and development. However, B4E communications suggested that greater focus be placed on outreach to industry in the years ahead.
These results have been gleaned from an annual evaluation of Bio4Energy for 2012 which, as a research environment with support from the Swedish government, each year submits a Strategic Research Environment Questionnaire to Swedish authorities backed up by attachments listing most things from members and publications, to finances and “public impact”. |
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