When: 18-22 October 2020

Where: Athens, Greece

The main aim of the IUPAC International Conference series on Green Chemistry (ICGC) is to bring together all relevant stakeholders from academia, research, industry, NGOs, policy makers and society, to exchange and disseminate knowledge and ideas that promote the concept of green chemistry, sustainable development and circular economy. This year’s conference is the ninth of the ICGC series, the first having been organised in Germany (2006), followed by Russia (2008), Canada (2010), Brazil (2012), South Africa (2014), Italy (2016), Russia (2017) and Thailand (2018).

The ICGC-9 will cover the following general topics

• Green Chemistry in Academia, Research and Industry
• Green Chemistry in Education and Society
• Green Chemistry for Sustainable Development, Bioeconomy and Circular Economy

The scientific programme will deal with global trends and developments in the field of green and sustainable chemistry, as well as with research and technology aspects of high importance to specific parts of the world. For example, the topic of biomass valorisation will be discussed both with regard to agricultural, as well as forestry wastes, to be of interest to relevant countries and regions. The use of non-toxic solvents, the development of low/no waste industrial chemical processes, the use of bio-based or degradable plastics, as well as the increase of societal and political awareness on green chemistry practices, will comprise of topics with a broader audience. The contribution of Green Chemistry to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nationswill also be  highlighted. Within this context, both new fundamental chemistry approaches, as well as dedicated industry-oriented processes will be discussed, in the different areas of chemistry and chemical engineering.

The conference programme will comprise of Plenary, Keynote, Oral and Poster presentations, and will include workshops, e.g. on bio-based polymers and plastics recycling, presentation of awards and prizes, as well as attractive social events.

Highlights of the conference will be communicated by IUPAC via its news magazine Chemistry International, and the proceedings will be published in a Special Issue of IUPAC’s official journal, Pure and Applied Chemistry. Special issues of high-impact journals in the field of Green and Sustainable Chemistry will also be produced, with selected papers of the conference, following standard peer-review procedures.

On the platform for Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion Technologies researchers develop biocatalysts and bioprocesses, drawing on microbial conversion of forest-sourced biomass, notably. Photo used with permission.

• Use tree cell-wall polymers as a raw material for producing electrictiy, heat, biofuel and value-added 'co-products' using biorefinery methods and;
• Create and develop biocomposites using nanotechnology.

Platform leader is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., professor at Umeå University.

The following researchers are part of Bio4Energy Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion Technologies:

Leif Jönsson and Carlos Martín Medina show the plaque and diploma their research group were awarded for the great interest shown by the research community in their scientific article on biomass inhibitors in wood biorefinery. Photo by InYung Sunwoo.

A team of Bio4Energy scientists and partners have been acknowledged at a prestigious conference for their work to reduce the effect of toxic substances in the pre-treatment of biomass destined for conversion to advanced biofuels made using yeast or microbes to turn wood polymers into fuels.

Their review article, Pre-treatment of lignocellulose: Formation of inhibitory by-products and strategies for minimising their effects, published in the Bioresource Technologyscientific journal, has not stopped receiving acclaim since its publication in 2016. At the time of New Horizons in Biotechnology Conference (NHBT-2019)—a conference given in India in November this year—results from the article had been mentioned 560 times in other scientific articles by researchers worldwide.

This made the editorial board of Bioresource Technology decide to award the researcher with a diploma and a plaque for their Highly Downloaded Article 2019.

“It is the most downloaded article steadily during the last two years and the most cited article of Bioresource Technology since 2016”, said This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of Umeå University and a PI on the platform Bio4Energy Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion Technologies.

“I think it helped that the review covered all three areas of pre-treatment, formation of inhibitors and strategies [designed to lessen] their effects”, Martín added, “and that the discussion included some new important inhibitors in terms of their effects. That is, compounds that form in small amounts, but which are very strong inhibitors”.

For their verification experiments, the Bio4Energy researchers used the Biorefinery Demonstration Plant, at Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. Photo by courtesy of RISE Research Institutes of Sweden.Late 2015, Bio4Energy researchers unveiled a series of articles describing how to raise yields in biofuel making by decreasing the impact of toxic substances generated in the pre-treatment step of biochemical conversion to fuels and chemicals, by using reducing agents. Their work, targeting advanced biofuel production from woody raw materials—sometimes referred to as the biorefinery of the future—has received a great amount of attention from researchers all over the world.

Mid-March this year, the main scientific article in the series, giving a review of research in the area and outlining the new method, had received over 400 citations in other scientific articles written by researchers worldwide. This is more than 20 times the average of articles published in the prestigious Bioresource Technology journal, which carried the review, according to Carlos Martín of Umeå University (UmU). Martín and his co-author This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. are leading figures on the research and development platform Bio4Energy Biopolymers and Biochemical Conversion Technologies.

“Friends and colleagues from all over the world sent their congratulations. Yesterday [25 March] we had received 410 citations. A lot of people have been asking for full-text papers”, a smiling Martín said.

Bio4Energy is part of five of nine projects to apply system analysis on new biofuels, recently granted by the funding programme Renewable Transportation Fuels and Systems.Bio4Energyis part of a swathe of new research projects to check whether various types of advanced biofuels can make the cut in the mix and competition with other fuels on the market. All are biofuels whose application is high in demand.

This has led the Swedish Energy Agency, in collaboration with the f3 Swedish Knowledge Centre for Renewable Transportation Fuels (f3 Centre); to create a research-funding programme called Renewable Transportation Fuels and Systems. Spanning the years 2018 through 2021, its second round of funding has just been granted, with Bio4Energy participation in five of nine projects. Little wonder then, that Bio4Energy’s coordinator at the f3 Centre is pleased.

“This is a good way to create a continuous stream of research [results] regarding the systemic conditions of technology-based projects. In Bio4Energy we are already experts at collaborating with each other, and here the collaboration can be extended to other funding programmes coordinated by the Energy Agency”, according to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., associate professor at the Luleå University of Technology in northern Sweden.

Wetterlund herself is in charge of one the newly granted projects, called Future-proof biofuels through improved use of biogenic carbon – Carbon, climate and cost efficiency (K3).

A patch of mainly coniferous forest in northern Sweden, in mid-October 2019. Photo by Anna Strom© 2019.Next year, Bio4Energy scientists will kick off multiannual projects, respectively, on integrated climate assessment of using woody biomass, production of membranes to desalinate sea water and on investigating the “unknowns” of plant cell biology for the ultimate purpose of increasing biomass production. The Swedish Research Council Formas (Formas) or the Swedish Research Council (VR) granted the projects in their respective annual rounds of funding.

What uses of biomass should be preferred to minimise greenhouse gas emissions?

The first project is broad in scope and will require the researchers to use a number of system analysis models. The aim is to find out, starting from sustainably managed forests in Sweden, which type of use of the harvested biomass will maximise efficiency, in terms of using bioenergy instead of fossil fuels for the purpose of minimising greenhouse gas emissions. The findings will serve to guide decision-makers in their attempt to understand what mix of technologies to favour and, consequently, what support measures to propose.

“Understanding the climate impact of different forest biomass paths is paramount for the implementation of appropriate policy measures. The purpose of the project is to improve the effectiveness of reaching the climate targets by advancing our understanding of climate impacts of using biomass, especially trade-offs and interactions of climate effects between the biophysical and economical systems”, says the project grant application.