Call for abstracts – Supergen Bioenergy Hub Researchers’ Day Meeting, deadline 20 April 2021
The Supergen Bioenergy Hub works with academia, industry, government and societal stakeholders to develop sustainable bioenergy systems that support the UK’s transition to an affordable, resilient, low-carbon energy future. During 2020 we identified six bioenergy systems case studies that we want to analyse, in order to evaluate their sustainability and potential contribution to the UK’s bioenergy future.
We are keen to ensure that our analysis builds upon the very best UK science and engineering research within and beyond the Hub. Therefore, we would like to invite all interested researchers to contribute to our virtual researchers’ meeting on Friday 7 May (). The topics we would particularly value input into are:
- Energy crop production
- Agricultural and forest residues
- Gasification
- Syngas upgrading to hydrogen
- Ionic liquid pre-treatments
- Fermentation
- Catalysis
- Biorefineries
- Bio-chemical production
Abstracts should be submitted to supergen-bioenergy@aston.ac.uk by 20 April 2021 at 13:00 BST.
We hope to identify UK research expertise in the above areas that can then be incorporated into our analysis of the following Supergen Bioenergy Hub case studies:
1: Hydrogen Fuel Cell: Energy crops and/or agricultural residues are used as feedstocks to produce hydrogen through a gasification conversion pathway. During the gasification and syngas upgrading processes, the CO2 (and other gas components) are separated and captured, leaving hydrogen to be used with a fuel cell to generate energy.
2: Biorefinery: Energy crops such as short rotation coppice (eg, willow) are processed through the application of ionic liquids as a pre-treatment, followed by fermentation and catalysis processes to produce advanced liquid biofuels and value-added chemicals. Alternatively, forest residues could be used as the feedstock.
3: Transport Fuels from Wastes 1: Municipal solid waste is processed for a gasification conversion process. The produced syngas is upgraded and used to produce (a) gaseous transport fuels or (b) converted to liquid bio-jet fuels through a Fischer-Tropsch process.
4: Transport Fuels from Wastes 2: Municipal solid waste is collected, processed and then subjected to a fast pyrolysis process. Pyrolysis oil is produced to be used to blend liquid transport fuels.
5: Heat from Food Wastes: Food wastes are collected and processed through catalytic conversion to produce hydrogen that can be used to generate heat.
6: Bioelectricity with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): Energy crops are grown specifically for the bioenergy sector to generate electricity with linked carbon capture and storage technologies for greenhouse gas removal.
The full Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies Report can be found here.
Researchers should submit an abstract that shows their relevant activity/knowledge. The most relevant submissions will be invited to give an oral presentation at the Supergen Bioenergy Hub researchers’ day meeting. Each session in the resarchers’ day meeting will focus on one of the six case studies. Researchers are invited to indicate which case study they feel is most relevant, but the final decision on programme slot allocation will be made by the relevant project investigators to achieve a balanced, overall programme. In all sessions significant time will be reserved for group discussion of research data/activity relevant to the case study with all meeting attendees.
Following the researchers’ day meeting our final call for Supergen Bioenergy Hub Flexible Funding will be launched. This will be focused on research work relevant to the case studies, therefore it is strongly recommended that all potential flexible fund applicants attend the researchers’ day meeting to learn more about the Hub, its case studies and how their work can complement and support the core research programme.
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If you have any queries, please contact Emma Wylde (Hub Project Manager) via e.wylde@aston.ac.uk.
