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A couple of Bio4Energy researchers are set to receive multi-year ChristofferBoman JohanGunseus SynkBio4Energy researcher Christoffer Boman studies chemical properties of emissions of particulate matter from biomass combustion to better undertand their negative effects on health. Photo by Johan Gunséus, Synk.
funding from one of Sweden’s most well-respected research funding bodies, to conduct research on emissions from biomass combustion and on using ionic liquids to separate carbon dioxide (CO2) from synthesis gas or biogas, respectively.

Affiliated with Umeå University (UmU) and Luleå University of Technology (LTU), respectively, 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., both received grants of about SEK800,000 per year for three years.

The announcement came last week with the posting of an Excel file on the website of the Swedish Research Council, revealing this year's list of award-winning projects in its Science and Technology category. While procedure has it that no grant is confirmed before a project instigator holds in his or her hand a physical letter from SRC, attesting to the veracity of the grant, at least the posting of the online list should be an indication of which applicants will get lucky.

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Scientists on the Bio4Energy Biochemical Platform have won a grant KB UR MS Biochem 1012Kris Berglund (left), Ulrika Rova and Magnus Sjöblom of Bio4Energy won a grant to trial production of butyeric acid at the 10,000-litre scale. Photo: Leif Nyberg, Luleå University of Technology
designed to support trials at the Ethanol Pilot—Sweden’s only large-scale demonstration unit for biorefinery production, at Örnsköldsvik—of a bio-based acid that may be used as a food ingredient, solvent or aroma, in cosmetic applications or as a softener in plastics.

Thanks to the SEK3.9 million grant from the Swedish Energy Agency, Bio4Energy researchers This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 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., all of Luleå University of Technology (LTU), next month will start trials to scale up production of butyric acid from forest-sourced raw materials or agricultural residue.

Having perfected the technology in their research laboratories at LTU in northern Sweden and at Michigan State University, U.S.A., the researchers would attempt to scale up by several steps an anaerobic fermentation process in which bacteria converts biomass into the high-value chemical in question, Berglund said, on the phone from LTU where he is a professor.

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As of this month, Bio4Energy has a new leader. Marianne Sommarin, B4E Board 512A change of leadership for the Bio4Energy Board. From left: Marianne Sommarin, Ulf Edlund, Stellan Marklund; all of Umeå University. Right: Kristina Elg Christoffersson, Domsjö Fabriker. Photo by Bio4Energy.
deputy vice chancellor of Umeå University in northern Sweden, will be taking over the chairmanship of the B4E Board when its reunites 25 October.

Today she went to meet 40 B4E researchers gathered at a biannual Bio4Energy Researchers' Meeting, given at Skellefteå, Sweden.

Sommarin, who is also a professor of plant biochemistry, and a part of the Umeå University management group, is the second person to hold the chairmanship of the B4E Board. She succeeds Ulf Edlund, an Umeå University professor in Organic Chemistry who retired this year. Edlund headed up the Board from the start of the Bio4Energy strategic research environment in 2010, until its latest meeting in May 2012.

In addition to the Board's core task of overseeing and directing Bio4Energy budgetary allocations, Sommarin will take over a shared responsibility for updating and extending the programme's research and development (R&D) strategy, one leg of which will cover the last two years of the first five-year programme period.

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Recent research projects on nutrient recycling from biomass SP 20912The life-cycle assessors: From left Stellan Marklund of Bio4Energy and; Johanna Berlin, Johanna Jönsson, Frida Røyne and Johan Thorén, all of the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden. Photo by Bio4Energy.ash and on biofuel production from biomass mixed with household waste have been showing promising results, a meeting of the Bio4Energy Environmental Platform heard this week. Moreover, much awaited work to run environmental quality checks on Bio4Energy’s research had kick-started with a new cooperation between B4E and the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, participants to the meeting at Umeå, in northeastern Sweden, were told.

Commonly known as SP, the 1200-strong state-run research institute will lend no less than four of its Gothenburg-based researchers on systems analysis to B4E, with the aim of them carrying out a life-cycle assessment (LCA) on various tools and methods for conducting sustainable biorefinery, developed by researchers in B4E. This means that the SP employees This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., 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. are official members of B4E.

“We are happy to cooperate with SP. You are the glue that binds together researchers and business and industry (in Sweden). I really believe in this cooperation. It is of strategic importance to us”, said the B4E programme manager This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. head of the Environmental Platform, with a nod to the SP co-workers at the gathering of the B4E Environmental Platform.

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bioenergi rgbBio4Energy and the Solander Science Park are joining forces to host this year’s Bioenergy  
conference—an annually recurring event by Nolia conference organisers aimed at business leaders, policy makers and scientists interested in bioenergy and biorefinery research and development.

Given at Pite Havsbad at Piteå, on the east cost of northern Sweden, 14-15 November, the conference will see Bio4Energy researcher line up to describe the latest scientific advances globally as this relates to the development of methods and tools for conducting efficient and sustainable biorefinery and to develop bioenergy techniques.

As a second strand, well-known Swedish experts on the commercialisation of research results will be discussing ways in which to boost innovation and to create meeting places for academia and their counterparts in industry.
Attachments:
Download this file (Framtidens_produkter_av_skogsråva_ämne_för_årets_Bioenergikonferens_Pressmeddela)Bio4Energy_to_co-host_Nolia_Bioenergy_conference_Press_release_in_Swedish[ ]93 kB

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By the end of this week 32 people from Sweden and other countries  B4G Res 611Scientists in Bio4Gasification, the research arm of the Swedish Centre of Biomass Gasification. At the centre of the front row is its leader, Rikard Gebart of the Luleå University of Technology. Photo by Anna Strom©.
with a professional interest in biomass gasification research and development are set to know more on the subject.

From 13 to 17 August, leading experts on biomass gasification are giving the year-old Swedish Centre for Biomass Gasification's first ever summer school for graduate students and industry-based engineers, at Luleå University of Technology in northern Sweden.

The gasification experts—a number of whom are researchers in Bio4Energy—are at Luleå to share their knowledge on ways in which to turn forest-sourced biomass or organic waste into synthesis gas—an energy rich gas suitable for being turned into heating or automotive fuels with a minimal environmental impact—and to avoid pitfalls on the way.

"The students get a much deeper and broader perspective on gasification issues (than if they had) just worked on their individual PhD projects", said SFC coordinator This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., adding, "including on techniques that are not covered in their own work".

On the eve of the second day, he is bullish about the teaching and response to it, having hoped for 20-or-so people to attend the summer school but ending up with 32.

Attachments:
Download this file (SFC_Summer_School_August_2012_Programme.pdf)SFC_Summer_School_August_2012_Programme[ ]50 kB

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Scientists at the Umeå Plant Science Centre—an excellence centre UPSC ind GSOldgrowth confierous forest in Sweden. Photo courtesy of the Umeå Plant Science Centre.
in tree breading and forest-sourced raw materials research, and a professional home to many a Bio4Energy scientist—have launched a call for candidates to join its freshly created industry-oriented graduate school.

The graduate school is one leg in ongoing efforts to secure a new generation of researchers equipped with the skills to work "in the intersection between classical tree breeding, molecular genetics and functional genomics", UPSC scientists explain in the call for applications. As the forestry industry seeks renewal to keep up with calls for products that are efficient in terms of cost and resource use, and have a limited environmental footprint, new business strategies are needed—and new skills. 

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The application by Bio4Energy researchers to start a research training UlrikaRova 612Bio4Energy scientist Ulrika Rova after a Shift2Bio work meeting at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, in June. Photo by Bio4Energy.
programme for PhD students under the ERASMUS Mundus Joint
Doctorates (EMJD) scheme has not been granted, according to a letter forwarded to coordinators of the proposed Shift2Bio graduate school.

The letter dated 19 July from the European Union agency administering the scheme, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), gave good marks to the structure and content of the Shift2Bio programme on innovative uses of biomass. However, an attached assessment by academic experts of the project proposal pointed to holes in the work plan and budget, something which would have led the EACEA to give the latter a collective weak mark.

This, however, did not stop the academic experts from praising the proposed Shift2Bio project for its academic and industrial relevance and recognising its “unique” character. The teaching and training in Shift2Bio would have covered the entire biorefinery value chain of forest-sourced products and organic waste, fostered innovation and included cooperation by an extensive range of industrial and consultancy actors offering to open up their research and demonstration facilities to programme students.

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