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News

Morning Session - 1

Francisco Gírio: Biorefineries in Europe – status quo and future perspectives
 

IMG 8174 c
SMIBIO project coordinator Francisco Gírio (LNEG, Portugal) opens the workshop

After introducing the SMIBIO project, the coordinator Francisco Gírio (LNEG) presented an overview about existing biorefineries in Europe and beyond. Starting, he mentioned the complexity of the biorefinery concepts in general. After showing the thermochemical and chemical conversion value chains, Mr. Gírio showed examples of operating and planned biorefineries that use thermal gasification to produce biofuels. Following, biorefineries that use pyrolysis, catalytic pyrolysis and hydropyrolisis to produce bio-oils and biorefineries that use hydrothermal processing to generate intermediates and gas were presented. Then he presented the biggest bioethanol plants in Europe (Biochemtex, Italy), Brazil (Raízen) and the USA (Poet/DSM) which have the capacity to produce 60,000, 32,000 and 60,000 tons of ethanol per year, respectively. Many bioethanol plants are still demonstration plants, yet concrete plans to develop lignocellulosic (LC) ethanol plants exist.
Mr. Gírio continued with an overview about biorefinery concepts that convert intermediates to hydrocarbons. These concepts have either LC biomass or algae as feedstock. After presenting novel ideas in early stage development like bionic leaf and bio-solar cell factories, Mr. Gírio concluded that the implementation of the concepts will still take time. The main bottleneck is the development gap from pilot to industrial plant. In order to reach the biofuel goals aimed for, dedicated support, e. g. investment funds must be developed having in mind the challenges for the sector. Finally, Mr. Gírio stated that a stable and reliable political framework is necessary for a successful development of the European biofuels sector.

Presentation

Events

Bioenergy Events

1er Simposio Latinoamericano de Bioeconomía

10 July 2019, Buenos Aires, Argentina

http://bioeconomiaeventos.mincyt.gob.ar/inscripcion.php

 

Biofuels and Bioenergy

26-27 August 2019, Vienna, Austria

https://biofuels-bioenergy.expertconferences.org/

 

4th EuCheMS Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry

22-25 September 2019, Tarragona, Spain

http://eugsc4.iciq.es/

 

International Conference on Biofuels & Bioenergy: Fuels of the future

23-25 September 2019

http://www.phronesisonline.com/biofuels-conference/

 

Expo Biomasa

24-26 September 2019, Valladolid, Spain

https://www.expobiomasa.com/

 

Biofuels International

22 - 23 October 2019, Brussels, Belgium

https://biofuels-news.com/conference/

 

 

The SMIBIO project is implemented in the framework of ERANet-LAC, a Network of the European Union (EU), Latin America and the Caribbean Countries (CELAC) co-funded by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme for Research and technology Development (FP7).

Support is provided by the following national funding organisations:

BMBF/DLR, Germany
COLCIENCIAS, Colombia
CONACYT, Mexico
CONICYT, Chile
FCT, Portugal
MINECO, Spain