ENSE Seminar Series

Professor Cees Buisman
Sunday, 22 October, 2017
4:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Auditorium between building 4 & 5, Level 0

Professor dr.ir. Cees J.N. Buisman holds a Ms.C and Ph.D degree from Wageningen University & Research. Since 2003, he is Professor at the sub department of Environmental Technology at Wageningen University in the field of biological reuse and recovery technology. The current focal point is on bio-electrochemistry, alternative fermentation and biological induced solid production, both for recovery of energy, chemicals and minerals.

Title: Future Anaerobic Technologies. The coming 50 years will bring us abundant non-fossil energy, a circular economy for nutrients and materials and increasing scarcity of water.

As biomass production requires a lot of water, biomass is no suitable energy source. Energy sources like sun and wind will be dominant as they are CO2 free and hardly use any water. Hydrogen and electricity (electrons) will therefore be the energy carriers and base chemicals of the future. From electricity and hydrogen, together with CO2, organic chemical can be produced that replace the current fossil based ones.

With the decline in use of fossil; fuels, concentrated CO2 streams will no longer be available on a large scale. It seems therefore interesting to use AD to produce precursors for organic chemicals from organic waste. These precursors can be used as feedstock for the chemical industry. Such precursors will have a much higher value than the biogas conventionally produced in AD.

Two approaches will be discussed, the first is the carboxylate route, in which acetate and/or propionate are the building block from which other precursors are produced, e.g. via chain elongation. The second approach is selective degradation of pre-separated waste streams, like bio-degradable plastics. Here new biodegradation mechanisms are developed to produce monomer/oligomers suitable for bio-degradable plastics production while preventing further breakdown to acetate.