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An efficient hybrid technology for producing bioethanol from Indian River INEOS BioThe 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, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 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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Last week a conference in Sweden opened the Bio4Energy LindsayOhlin PhD 3002Lindsay Ohlin, PhD, scored the 2013 Solander Biorefinery Award for the "best" student presentation of the Bio4Energy Graduate School opening conference. Photo by Bio4Energy.
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. Bio4Energy 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, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.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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An excellence centre drawing together the best brains in Swedish Poplar UPSC Kjell OlofssonPoplar 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, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.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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Tuesday 19 March Bio4Energy will mark the start of its Graduate QiujuGao MarEdo 313PhD 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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 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.
Attachments:
Download this file (Bio4Energy_startar_forskola_med_konferens_Tomas_Kåberger_&_Jan_Lagerström_talar_)Press release in Swedish on start of Bio4Energy Graduate School and Conference[ ]285 kB

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This week a research technology support centre opened its doors MarianneSommarin JohanSchnürer 2898 cmprMarianne 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 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Provision of training courses in using the technology or conferences relaying research results could also be envisaged, he said.

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In its third year of operation, the research environment Bio4Energy DIFutureEnergy 012Last 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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The annual Umeå Renewable Energy Meeting is about to kick UREM 16312 052Hannele Tuominen of the Umeå Plant Science Centre hands Johannes Messinger of Umeå University a gift at the close of last year's Umeå Renewable Energy Meeting. Photo by Bio4Energy.
off 25 February with 250 participants registered and several sessions chaired by Bio4Energy researchers—more than in any of the previous four UREMs given on both accounts.

The following morning will be given over mainly to biochemical conversion of forest-sourced biomass to fuels or “green” chemicals, drawing on enzymatic or microbial conversion routes. These sessions (3 and 4) will be chaired by the Umeå University (UmU) professor This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. who heads the Bio4Energy Biochemical Platform. Moreover in the “Bio4Energy Session” starting at 11 a.m., B4E researcher This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.of UmU will be ‘Exploring the potential of on-site production in lignocellulosic biorefineries’.

In the Wednesday 27 February morning sessions development of “high yield, sustainable energy trees” and water oxidation catalyst inspired by photosynthesis will be described, in a couple of sessions led by the UmU associate professor This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.of the Bio4Energy Feedstock Platform.
Attachments:
Download this file (UREM_2013_programme_print.pdf)UREM 2013 meeting programme[ ]1774 kB

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A multimillion Swedish-kroner venture in which researchers
and technicians will be working to perfect methods for B4G Res 611Bio4Energy researchers in Bio4Gasification gather outside the bioDME demonstration plant at Piteå, Sweden, after a meeting. Rikard Gebart, centre, will be leading the research arm of the new LTU Green Fuels centre. Photo by Anna Strom©.producing biofuels from forest-sourced materials on a commercial scale will be coordinated by a Bio4Energy scientist. Centering on development activities at a cluster of pilot facilities at Piteå, Sweden, the plans designed to test and demonstrate entrained-flow gasification of different types of biomass-based materials could be worth up to SEK300 million (€35.5 million).

In fact, after an intense autumn of putting the funding application package together, Bio4Energy scientist This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., professor at the Luleå University of Technology (LTU) before the turn of the year received the first signs that not only the Swedish Energy Agency, but also the Norrbotten County Administrative Board and not least LTU itself, were ready to invest in a takeover by LTU of the Chemrec Kraftliner at Piteå biofuel development centre, thus renamed LTU Green Fuels.

Its staff had been made redundant since the owner at the time, Chemrec, decided not to invest in continued operations past 2012 citing a lack of regulatory certainty. The 19 staff members were researchers and technicians with great expertise, known to have made their employer a forerunner in "green" fuel development and notably for developing a near-zero environmentally-harmful-emission type of biodiesel, dimethyl ether (DME), from a by-product of locally sourced pulp. In 2009 Chemrec said that their bioDME has one of the highest land-use efficiencies of all second generation biofuels.

Closing down the facilities "would have set technology development back by five years", Gebart said of the perspective that the development centre be mothballed.

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