Field Trials Confirm Greater Bioethanol Yields Possible from Genetically Modified Trees

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Created: Wednesday, 24 June 2020 17:35

Written by Anna Strom

Ewa Mellerowicz surveys a hybrid aspen plant at an early stage of field trials in Sweden. Photo by courtesy of Ewa Mellerowicz.Scientists in Bio4Energy and academic colleagues have shown in field trials that aspen trees that were genetically modified (GM) to render more input material for making biofuel from wood than their wildtype counterparts, are robust enough to grow at a real-life plantation. The researchers also found that they could extract more such glucose sugar, more easily, from the GM trees, compared with the wildtype.

This is the first time such results have been obtained outside of a research laboratory—that is outside of a greenhouse—according to research leader This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) at Umeå, Sweden.

“The glucose yield was 25 to 30 percent higher in the modified trees compared with the wildtype trees. This is a result obtained without pre-treatment so it means that [the modification helped to] decrease the recalcitrance of the wood and made the raw material easier to transform into sugar”, Mellerowicz told Bio4Energy Communications.

Mellerowicz is one of the principal investigators on the research and development platform Bio4Energy Feedstock and has been in charge of verifying laboratory results in experimental plantations, or field trials, since the start in 2014 at Våxtorp, Sweden. The scientists planted and monitored more than 600 GM hybrid aspen trees, but which had to be harvested on the early side because of the impact of severe drought conditions in the summer of 2018, when all of Europe experienced heat waves.

Read more: Field Trials Confirm Greater Bioethanol Yields Possible from Genetically Modified Trees

Progress by Bio4Energy's R&D Platforms Unveiled

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Created: Thursday, 18 June 2020 17:07

Written by Anna Strom

Bio4Energy's researchers and students met online to share the latest progress by the seven Bio4Energy Research and Development (R&D) Platforms, as the 17 June Spring 2020 Bio4Energy Researchers' Meeting.*

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Attachments:

Bio4Energy Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion Technologies	[Leif Jönsson]	377 kB
Bio4Energy Environment and Nutrient Recycling	[Stina Jansson]	267 kB
Bio4Energy Feedstock	[Totte Niittylä]	6443 kB
Strategic Planning	[Leif Jönsson]	389 kB
Bio4Energy System Analysis and Bioeconomy	[Robert Lundmark]	1377 kB
Bio4Energy Thermochemical Conversion Technologies	[Markus Broström]	304 kB
Bio4Energy Wood Pre-processing	[Sylvia Larsson]	837 kB

Read more: Progress by Bio4Energy's R&D Platforms Unveiled

Popular PhD Course Cancelled, But New Online Introduction on Cards

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Created: Wednesday, 03 June 2020 15:18

Written by Anna Strom

Sylvia Larsson is new coordinator for education in Bio4Energy. Here with co-worker Atanu Kumar Das. Bio4Energy is having to cancel this autumn’s course in the Bio4Energy Graduate School for advanced students. Biorefinery Pilot Research has been hugely popular for its on-location learning about pilot and demonstration facilities along the coast of northern Sweden. However, the risk for spread of the global Coronavirus means the course has been postponed to next year.

“We will be giving the course as soon as things settle down; hopefully already in spring”, said This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., new coordinator for education in Bio4Energy.

Instead an online introduction will be developed so that all PhD students and postdoctoral researchers interested in research and development in the area of wood biorefinery will have the possibility to learn more about the Bio4Energy research environment and the basics of its activities.

“We are going to make something exceptional that will serve as an entry point to the Graduate School”, Larsson said;

“It is about giving all PhD student the possibility to access what we have to offer. It will place the focus content of the hands-on courses in context. It gives students from different universities the possibility to study together. We have a lot of international students”, she explained.

Read more: Popular PhD Course Cancelled, But New Online Introduction on Cards

Innovation Project on Combined Mushroom, Biofuel Production Attract Headlines

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Created: Friday, 08 May 2020 16:14

Written by Anna Strom

Shaojun Xiong leads a project on developing joint mushroom and biofuel production, funded by the Swedish platforms BioInnovation and Bio4Energy. Photo by Anna Strom©2020. A highly original research project—on developing joint production of edible edible mushroom and biofuel—is receiving attention as a top-of-the-line innovation effort in Sweden, as part of the country's aim to develop new technologies and processes for a circular bioeconomy.

A Bio4Energy researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences invented the concept, which rests on the idea that both production strands would be more cost effective and environmentally friendly if they were made in synergy.

If this turns out to be the case—if and when the proposed process and the technologies it relies on have been proven—Sweden could become a net producer of edible mushroom and rely less on imports, all the while making cost-competitive ethanol biofuel.

Attachments:

Hjältar i Skogsindustriernas Magasin 1, 2020

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1288 kB

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New Programme Managers for Bio4Energy

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Created: Wednesday, 25 March 2020 16:34

Written by Anna Strom

Bio4Energy's new management team (from left): Christoffer Boman, Leif Jönsson and Elisabeth Wetterlund. Photo by Mattias Pettersson.Bio4Energy has new programme managers. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of Umeå University (UmU) will be acting programme managers and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., Luleå University of Technology (LTU) their deputy.

The appointment comes at a pivotal time, since Bio4Energy is coming up to the close of its second programme period in 2020. Its funder, the Swedish government, is expected to decide this year whether to renew the funding for Sweden’s Strategic Research Environments (SRE), of which Bio4Energy is one.

It will be up to the newly appointed threesome to lead Bio4Energy into the future.

“We hope that wise decisions will be made and that the SRE initiative is allowed to continue. We will have to await the arrival of political decision to know more about this”, said Jönsson, professor of Chemistry at UmU.

Read more: New Programme Managers for Bio4Energy

Project to Develop Sustainability Metrics for Innovative Business on IVA 100 List

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Created: Wednesday, 26 February 2020 17:16

Written by Anna Strom

This team of system analysis researchers at Bio4Energy made the IVA 100 List for Sustainable Competitiveness 2020, with their scheme Developing Sustainability Metrics for Innovative Business. From left: Kavitha Shanmugam, Mats Tysklind, Krishna Upadhyayula and Dalia Abdelfattah.Bio4Energy’s work on developing sustainability metrics for innovative business has been acknowledged by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), on its 100 List for Sustainable Competitiveness 2020.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and his team at Umeå University (UmU), specialised in system analysis research, developed the sustainability metric scheme to assist investors wanting to take so called game-changing academic innovations to commercialisation and to market roll out.

The scheme entails four steps, in which the system analysis researchers start by examining an innovation’s environmental and competitiveness credentials using life-cycle assessment and cost-benefit analysis and end by offering easy-to-use indicators, based on which investors can make their decision to invest or not.

The IVA 100 List for Sustainable Competitiveness 2020 highlights academic research that “has a bearing on sustainability, in technical or economics sciences, which can create value for business or society in terms of knowledge, processes, products or business development”.

“We published a [scientific article] in 2018 that talks about how to make the sustainable decision-making process easy—or rather the financial decision-making process easy—for investors, venture capitalists and industries, to bring right and sustainable technologies to the market”, said Upadhyayula, who is an assistant professor at UmU.

Read more: Project to Develop Sustainability Metrics for Innovative Business on IVA 100 List

System for Cleanup of Toxic Chemicals to Be Tested in Sweden – Video

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Created: Friday, 21 February 2020 17:13

Written by Anna Strom

Stina Jansson, platform leader at Bio4Energy, at a conference in June 2019.For the first time in Sweden, researchers will test a system designed to remove polluted sediment at the bottom of lakes and waterways of toxic chemicals, developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the U.S. government. The Sorbent Polymer Extraction and Remediation System (SPEARS), has been used with good results in Canada and the U.S.A. and will be tested in Sweden by a research team at Umeå University (UmU) led by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., according to a UmU press release.

Whereas in the U.S. and Canada the use of SPEARS had been limited to the cleanup of well-known organic environmental toxins such as polycyclic chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), Jansson said, the Swedish scientists would also attempt to use it to clean up a range of other toxic compounds and metals.

Until their ban in manufacture in the late 1970s, PCB chemicals were widely used and notably in paints and adhesives. Even though their manufacture stopped, said NASA Kennedy Space Center scientist Jackie Quinn, in a promotional video for SPEARS, PCBs are found ubiquitously throughout the globe. Classified as persistent organic pollutants, they are known to induce cancer.

The UmU scientists, however, will test not only whether SPEARS can be made to clean sediments in Sweden of PCBs and PAHs, but also whether it can remove polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans, as well as metal-based substances or metals such as arsenic, methyl mercury or tributyltin.

Read more: System for Cleanup of Toxic Chemicals to Be Tested in Sweden – Video

Decisive Step Taken in Project to Bring Sustainable Bioenergy to Sub-Saharan Africa

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Created: Friday, 17 January 2020 18:45

Written by Anna Strom

Robert Lindgren of Bio4Energy fuels the pilot reactor for biomass gasification. Photo by Bio4Energy© 2020.Scientists in Bio4Energy have taken a decisive step in a multi-actor project to provide sustainable bioenergy solutions for people in some of the least well-off countries in Africa, by designing a pilot installation that will produce energy-rich gas and biochar from pre-treated biomass residues.

The construction of the two-metre tall pilot—which is still a miniature version of what a future commercial-scale gasification reactor would look like—is a collaboration between Bio4Energy researchers at Umeå University and at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences at Umeå, Sweden.

“The reactor makes us able to close the loop, or construct a total system, of upgrading and using residual biomass products from the agricultural industry”, said project leader This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of the research and development platform Bio4Energy Environment and Nutrient Recycling.

Boman and his colleague and former student This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., of the same R&D platform, have been championing the project since the outset in 2012, and with funding granted in 2015.

Attachments:

Exploring Sustainable Bioenergy Solutions: Feature in Bioenergy Insight Magazine

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1084 kB

Read more: Decisive Step Taken in Project to Bring Sustainable Bioenergy to Sub-Saharan Africa