Day 1 :
Keynote Forum
Nour Shafik El-Gendy
Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute
Keynote: Seaweeds Waste Biomass for a Clean and Sustainable Environment
Time : 09:30-10:00
Biography:
Dr. Nour Shafik El-Gendy is a Professor in the field of Environmental Sciences, Sustainable development, Clean Energy and Nano-Biotechnology. El-Gendy published 10 chapters, 9 books and 124 research papers, and supervised 29 MSc and PhD theses. She is also an editor and reviewer in 88 and 184 international journals, respectively. She participated also as PI, Co-PI or research member in research projects concerning with; biovalorization of wastes, solid waste management, bioethanol from lignocellulosic wastes; biofuels from algae, application of nanobiotechnology in upgrading of petroleum and bioremediation of polluted environment. El-Gendy is in international collaboration with many international universities and research institutes. Dr. El-Gendy established 4 ongoing research schools; Petroleum and Environmental Biotechnology, Environmental Nanobiotechnology, Biofuels, and Valorization of Solid Waste Biomass. El-Gendy is a member in many national and international associations and organizations concerned with petroleum industry, environmental health and sciences, sustainable development, water desalination, wastewater treatment, biofuel standards, nanotechnology, and environmental biotechnology
Abstract:
Millions tons of seaweeds waste biomass is annually produced all over the world. Such waste biomass is not economically reused, damaging our shorelines, affecting touristic activities and negatively impacting coral reefs, aquatic life and biodiversity. That consequently, negatively impacts the achievements of the sustainable development goals. Valorization of such wastes is a feasible process to reach a sustainable and clean environment. It can be successfully applied for; (1) production of valuable products; e.g. nano-materials, biocides, green- catalyst for biodiesel production and photo-catalytic degradation of different pollutants, (2) wastewater treatment, (5) production of different kinds of biofuels as complementary and/or alternative to ptero-fuels. Thus, valorization of such aquatic wastes with the concept of reaching zero-waste and achieving the circular economy is a promising criteria for accomplishing the three pillars of sustainability; economy, society and environment.
- Waste to Energy
Location: Webinar
Session Introduction
Eric van den Heuvel
Director of Netherlands knowledge and innovation Platform Renewable Fuels
Title: Need for speed and scale up for renewable fuels in mobility to curb climate change impact
Biography:
Eric van den Heuvel founded studio Gear Up, an independent firm supporting organisations in the transition to a low carbon economy, by providing strategic advice, process and project management services and guiding and facilitating stakeholder involvement processes. Furthermore, the studio develops own concepts in the field of renewable fuels, alternative fuels and the circular economy. Projects he is involved in, include among others the management of the Netherlands Platform Sustainable Biofuels, assisting the European alternative and Renewable Transport Fuels Forum, providing strategic support to various international operating companies active in renewable fuels, and providing strategic advice to Netherlands Ministries and the European Commission.
Abstract:
The EU and Member states like the Netherlands are stepping up their ambitions to tackle climate change. By 2030 CO2-emission levels should be 55% lower than they were in 1990. Of all economic sectors that have to bring down their emission, the mobility sector is the one sector that faces difficulties in curbing these levels. In some countries they are still higher than the 1990 levels. As such the climate mitigation achievements in mobility are becoming the Achilles heel for the climate achievements of countries as a whole.
While the registration numbers of newly purchased battery electric vehicle show strong growth profiles, the actual share in the total, also still growing, vehicle fleet by 2030 remains rather moderate. The EU expects around 30 million BEVs on a total of 260 million passenger cars by 2030.
To reach high climate reduction in mobility, by 2030 the total allowed volume of fossil-based fuels and energy carriers in mobility should have dropped by one third compared to the 2019 levels (as 2020 and 2021 are not fully representative as they showed Covid-19 affected volumes). That cannot be achieved by electric mobility alone, or with modal shift actions. Our analyses show that in the coming decade an urgent need for higher volumes of renewable fuels (either biobased or renewable electricity based) need to be deployed in the mobility sector, representing around one third of all energy used in transport.
Compared to the current average physical level of 6-8% share this requires speed and scale actions to develop drop in fuels, fuels for which engines need (slight) adaptation, new investments in advanced biofuel and RFNBO (renewable fuels of non-biological origin) production capacity, design and establishment of new sustainable feedstock supply chains, and last but not least the right policy frameworks that support this innovation and investment agenda.
Biography:
Dr. Tarek Hosny Taha is an associate professor at Environmental Biotechnology Department, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Research Institute (GEBRI), City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications (SRTA-CITY), Alexandria, Egypt. He is currently a visiting researcher at Newcastle University, UK. He has his expertise in the field of environmental biotechnology. His research interest is concerned by the biomonitoring and bioremediation of environmental contaminants. He is also interested in the biosynthesis of nanoparticles and their applications in biosensors and other environmental fields, and has a great passion with Bioinformatics, molecular techniques and genetic engineering. In addition, he is interested in the production of biofuel from environmental wastes, and finally, the bioconversion of environmental wastes into industrial and pharmaceutical products.
Abstract:
This work aims to valorize the using of the municipal solid waste as a raw material for the production of bioethanol. The office paper waste with optimum concentration of 6% was pretreated with 15% HCl and autoclaving followed by enzymatic degradation in order to increase the liberated glucose units to its maximum of 15.7 mg/ml. The liberated glucose units were subsequently fermented by Hanseniaspora uvarum (accession number OP800106) into bioethanol. One variable at time (OVAT) optimization process was performed in order to reach the maximum bioethanol production. The optimum conditions revealed that the inoculation of 5% (v/v) of the yeast pre-culture into the waste hydrolysate at pH 5 and temperature 30oC under anaerobic conditions would result in the production of 5.3 mg/ml bioethanol. The concentration of the produced bioethanol was increased from 31 to 79% using amicon cell-integrated polymeric membrane. The membrane which is a blend of Sulphonated polyvinyl chloride and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl-1-propanesulfonic acid (SPVC-PAMPS) was characterized using FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, and XRD. While its morphological appearance and thermal stability were investigated using SEM and TGA, respectively. After bioethanol purification, the total flux of the permeate was measured as 2530,659 mg/m2.h, which indicating that the used polymeric membrane can be effectively used for increasing the bioethanol concentration compared with other applied techniques.
Gbenga F Oluyemi
Robert Gordon University ,UK
Title: Proximate and Thermogravimetric Analysis of Tyre-Derived Carbon Black
Biography:
Dr Gbenga Oluyemi is an Associate Professor of Petroleum Geomechanics at Robert Gordon University, UK and the Chair of Sand Management Network UK. He has more than 20 years of experience spanning academia, the oil and gas industry and water/environmental engineering. Dr Oluyemi’s research interests are in process optimisation, life cycle cost and impact analysis, oil and gas production optimisation, formation evaluation, geomechanics, oilfield chemistry and value of information. He has substantial experience and expertise in process optimisation and upscaling studies. He has worked as PI and Co-PI on a range of projects funded by the UK government, EU, and oil companies over the last 14 years and has published more than 70 journal and conference papers.
Abstract:
Proximate analysis was carried out to determine the moisture, volatile, fixed carbon and ash content of Carbon Black derived from waste tyre thermal treatment. The procedure used followed the British Standards for the proximate analysis of coal. From the proximate analysis, it was determined that 8% and 10% of the Carbon Black were moisture and volatile matter. To remove the moisture and volatiles from the Carbon Black, treatment with air at elevated temperatures was recommended. Thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) of the Carbon Black was then carried out at 450°C, 500°C and 600°C. The results of the TGA showed that treatment at 450°C would require a long treatment time to remove the volatiles from the Carbon Black while treatments at both 500°C and 600°C were effective in removing the volatiles. However, with weight losses of 23.7% and 35.2% respectively for 30 and 60 minutes, treatments at 600°C were shown to be most effective in removing all the volatiles. Once the residual volatiles have been removed from the Carbon Black, further activation treatment was carried out in air at 850°C and CO2 at 850°C and 900°C to enhance its surface area and potential application as adsorbents for waste removal from fluid streams.
Rajan Sharma
University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, India
Title: Bioconversion of Lignocellulosic Biomass to Biogas
Biography:
Dr.Rajan Sharma had done phd in field of biomass to biofuel from university of petroleum and energy studies ,India . He had worked in different project of biogas .He attended various national and international conferences and author of three book .His research are is biomass to biofuels.
Abstract:
Depletion of fossil fuel and increase in environmental pollution at an alarming rate has motivated the researchers to look for the environmentally friendly as well as cost effective alternative sources of energy. Biomass is a renewable energy source developed from living or recently living plant and animal materials, which can be used as fuel. The main components present in biomass are polymers such as carbohydrate, protein, cellulose, lignin and fat. Biogas is produced when the biomass is anaerobically degraded by microorganisms. The process of anaerobic digestion (AD) takes place in four steps: hydrolysis, acidogenesis, acetogenesis, and methanogens. Biogas production from biomass is getting a lot of attention due to its easy availability and relatively simple biomass to energy conversion technology. Co-digestion of biomass with cattle dung is another promising method of converting biomass to energy through anaerobic digestion. In most developing countries like India, China etc. The principal occupation of the people is crop production and the crop residues remaining after harvesting is a major challenge to deal with. These biomasses are lignocellulosic in nature as they contain cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. They are not economically used; rather they are disposed off in the open environment or burnt, causing serious health problems and environmental pollution. Lignocellulosic biomasses are assessed for the use of anaerobic digestion with the objective of generating biogas from it and performing kinetic study on the produced biogas. The aim of the present study is to investigate the optimum pretreatment method and performance characteristics of anaerobic digestion of lignocellulosic biomass for biogas production in batch mode.To assess the potentiality towards biogas production, three different types of biomasses were collected and characterized. Based on the results obtained from the characterization, three different lignocellulosic biomasses viz. sugarcane bagasse, wheat straw and rice husk were selected, upon which small scale anaerobic digestion was performed. In this research, therefore, an optimal achievement of the lignocelluloses plant has been evaluated in the pretreatment impact (physical, chemical and biological) and multiple biogas manufacturing parameters. The pretreatment method focused on removal of lignin content by applying different alkaline and acid condition and then anaerobic digestion of pretreated biomass (WS, RH, and SB). The parameters considered for the analysis TS of biomass, temperature of substrate, C:N ratio and pH.
Biologically, Lignocellulose biomass gave maximum biogas yield followed by acid and alkaline treatment. Among thermal treatments, best results in the increase of methane formation were observed with the treatment of wheat straw followed by sugar cane bagasse and rice husk at 121°C & 120 minutes (19,8%,18%, and 13%, respectively). Acid pretreatment at optimized condition (30%, (60 minutes) and % increase in methane content is found maximum with anaerobic digestion of wheat straw (25%), sugarcane bagasse (20%) followed by rice husk (17%). Acid pretreatment has maximum impact on biomethanation of wheat straw biomass at optimized condition. Biological pretreatments performed with a fungal strain, improves methane production. The percentage increase in methane content after pretreatment with fungal strain is found maximum for wheat straw (34%), followed by sugarcane bagasse (30.2%) and rice husk (27.7%) respectively. Findings also show that these biomasses have high volatile matter content (above 60%) and high fixed carbon content (above 10%) which make them potent for biogas production. Effect of total solid and particle size of biomass on biogas production was studied and it was found that with 8-9% of total solid and 0.355 mm of particle size, maximum amount of biogas can be produced. Effect of temperature on biogas production from lignocellulosic biomass was also studied at five different temperatures from 35°C to 55°C at a step of 5°C and it was found that with increase in temperature of the digestate from 40°C to 55°C, biogas production from substrates can be increased. It is also observed that in mesophilic condition, biogas generation is the highest at 35°C followed by 40°C.Alongside the biogas delivered, AD additionally changes the additional feedstock into digestate that can be utilized as a compost which is high in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus substance. The N (%) from spent slurry from anaerobic assimilation of biomass (WS, RH, SB) was in the scope of 0.93 to 0.98, most noteworthy P(%) and K(%) found from slurry of anaerobic processing of rice husk.
- Bioenergy Transition
Location: Webinar
Session Introduction
Assal Selma
University of Trieste, Italy
Title: Application of Exergy Analysis in Living Cells
Biography:
Assal Selma is from Italy. She studied in University of Trieste, Dept. of Engineering and Architecture. She is very much interested in doing her research work related to bacteria using Biofuel Source.
Abstract:
The increasing demand for renewable energy sources has stimulated research in the field of biofuels, with microbial systems being a promising option. Among them, Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a well-known bacterium that has been genetically engineered for the production of various biofuels, including ethanol and butanol. However, the efficiency of these processes is limited by the intrinsic thermodynamic properties of living cells, which can be analyzed using exergy analysis.
Exergy analysis is a powerful tool for assessing the efficiency of energy conversion systems, including biological systems like E. coli cells. Exergy is the measure of the energy available to do useful work, while exergy cost theory quantifies the environmental impact of using such resources.
Exergy is a measure of the potential work that can be obtained from a system, taking into account its state and environment. In living cells, exergy can be used to quantify the irreversibilities associated with cellular processes, such as biochemical reactions and transport across membranes. By applying exergy analysis, it is possible to identify the limiting steps in biofuel production and propose strategies for their optimization.
Whilst Exergy cost theory can be used to assess the environmental impact of producing biofuels from
E. coli cells. This involves quantifying the exergy cost of the resources used in the production process, such as water and nutrients, as well as the exergy cost of the waste products generated during production. By minimizing the exergy cost, it is possible to reduce the environmental impact of biofuel production from this bacteria.
In this talk, we will present our work on the application of exergy analysis and of the exergy cost theory to E. coli cells as a biofuel resource, highlighting its ability to help in optimizing the biofuel production, improve efficiency, and reduce the environmental impact of this industrial process.
We will discuss how these insights can guide the design of more efficient biofuel production systems, and how exergy analysis can be extended to other microbial systems and applications.
Overall, this talk will provide a novel perspective on the use of exergy analysis in biotechnology, highlighting its potential to reveal the thermodynamic bottlenecks in living cells and pave the way towards sustainable bioenergy production.
Shreya Kanther
Thomas Jefferson University, USA
Title: Circular Business Models in the Construction Industry
Biography:
Shreya Kanther is a PhD Candidate. She is studying in Thomas Jefferson University, USA. She has done her research on circular economy.
Abstract:
The need for change in the construction sector and to convert its on-going negative effects on the environment into positive results, a radical shift from current practice in architecture or building sector is crucial. The linear economy model is the traditional model where raw materials are collected and transformed into products that consumers use until discarding them as waste, with no concern for their ecological footprint and consequences. In the Journal of Cleaner Production, circular economy is mentioned as a system in which resource input and waste, emission, and energy leakages are minimized by cycling, extending, intensifying, and dematerializing material and energy loops. This can be achieved through digitalization, servitization, sharing solutions, long-lasting product design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling. To implement the CE concept on the organizational level in the building industry, business models are important. Organizations that are willing to adopt the circular economy model need to implement new types of business models by rethinking value propositions and developing value chains that offer feasible cost efficiency, production effectiveness, and business performance.
According to the board of innovation, a circular business model articulates the logic of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value to its broader range of stakeholders while minimizing ecological and social costs. The Principles of CBMs are
- Source products and materials from the economy, not from ecological reserves.
- Create value for customers by adding value to existing products and materials.
- Create valuable inputs for businesses beyond your customer.
Circularity in the construction sector can be mainly divided in three different areas: Design and Planning, Construction phase and material supply. Currently, businesses implementing circular economy principles are product (material supply) based organizations. There is less discussion on circular business models focusing on the planning and design phase of the construction project. This is an opportunity for project designers to become a facilitator that integrates competencies and mutual benefits across the different stakeholders. It leads to planning and assessing circularity throughout an assets lifecycle by developing innovative and functional solutions. The transition to circular construction calls for consistent demands for new business models because the market is still nascent and circular ideas have not been implemented in all areas. Industrialized countries all over the world have started pushing and developing circular policies in the construction sector. There have been green infrastructure ratings such as LEED certification, Living Building Challenge, BREEAM, etc. to help in advancing the circular economy, aligning much of its evaluation process with climate mitigation, energy efficiency, resource and waste reduction, and sustainability. European countries like Scotland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark are accepting and approving circular economy legislations with the help of digital technology and integrated infrastructure systems whereas developing economies still lack access to the technology and financial investments needed to move from linear to circular methods.The research focuses on developing a circular business framework for the construction companies in developing economies by analyzing business models of large scale construction practices in the industrialized economies and looking at the potential of adopting it in the Indian context where there is opportunity to develop infrastructure by incorporating circular business strategies at core level. CBMs at initial design and planning phase of construction would make higher control of resource flow throughout the value chain and identification of value creation in the process. By highlighting the value proposition to all stakeholders, it is intended that more companies will see the benefit of contributing to a built environment based on a circular model. This requires exchanging information, collaborating at various levels, as well as tools and incentives which interest companies to receive a financial return. If many companies adopt circular business models in the construction industry, the focus will move to designing & planning considering environmental impacts, sourcing sustainably, maintaining material productivity, and reducing usage of non-renewable materials which will lead to substantial financial, social and environmental benefits.