Applied Biotechnology, Bioenergy and Biorefinery

The current, fast-growing field of industrial biotechnology and bioenergy sectors among other objectives deals with optimal refining of residue streams from agriculture, from the food/feed industry or from crops and other biological sources, to produce valuable new products or raw materials for other bio-processes – as a sustainable alternative to continued production of "waste". Biorefining concerns a wide range of materials and by-products as focus for ACABS' applied research, for student projects as well as for consulting and collaborative efforts on the industrial arena. Producing “green” electricity and heat from biogas production has a very high societal priority; ACABS is also looking into the area of liquid biofuels and chemicals.

How to design, operate and manage this type of processes includes control of the often very heterogeneous organic materials. This typically demands reliable sampling, new sensor technology approaches and the use of chemometric data analysis, PAC, PAT. Applied industrial biotechnology and bioenergy fermentation processes constitute ACABS' current primary application field. As an outstanding issue technical developments are based on green process engineering principles. ACABS provides numerous possibilities for students to participate in practical projects within the area of applied biotechnology. There are numerous collaboration projects within the agro-industrial and biogas production sectors and R&D&D projects in the upcoming biorefinery sector.