An international conference on biorefineries, bioenergy, biological wastewater treatment and other such subjects brought together a large number of researchers and business leaders in India recently.
‘It was pleasing that so many heavyweight companies attended, such as Dutch DSM, Danish Novozymes, and American Danisco-Genencor. Syngenta and Praj Industries, the Indian companies, were also represented, and there was an OECD representative as well,´ Professor Hatti-Kaul relates.
Biogas
She describes some of the many novelties that were presented.
‘One was a smart way of linking the new industrial biotechnology to the traditional chemical industry — starting with renewable raw materials and finishing with products identical to ones based on petrochemicals today. During the conference biogas as an energy carrier was also discussed.
‘As a motor fuel,´ she continues, ‘it´s far superior to the biofuels in focus today, in terms both of emissions and of the acreage required to produce the fuel. You can drive almost twice as far on what you get from a given area if you make biogas than if you produce ethanol or biodiesel.´
Improving energy crops was another hot topic at the conference.
‘Syngenta, for instance, has developed new varieties of sugarbeet that are superb for cultivating in tropical areas as well. And improvements in sorghum may make it far superior to sugar cane when it comes to production of ethanol.´
More conferences
The conference in India was arranged by the Biotechnology Department at Lund University, in collaboration with the Indian National Chemical Laboratory and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Mistra was among the sponsors of the conference.
‘There´s going to be another conference in Chicago where we´ll have a panel on the subject of Swedish developments in industrial biotechnology,´ Hatti-Kaul relates.
Links
Read more about the Chicago conference.
See a programme about another major conference in the field, Biocatalysis — Perspectives in White Biotechnology and Green Chemistry, to be held in Denmark on 12 March 2008.
Documentation concerning the conference in India.