News

We are pleased to announce that, on May 3rd, Celignis will be presenting and exhibiting at the National Biochar and Carbon Products Conference 2023, which is taking place in Carrick-on-Shannon in County Leitrm, Ireland.

This conference is being organised under the auspices of the Interreg Northwest Europe-funded THREE C Project, entitled 'Creating and sustaining Charcoal value chains to promote a Circular Carbon economy in NWE Europe'.

The conference will highlight both Irish stakeholders who are currently working in the biochar and carbon products sector, but also partners from the THREE C project (covering Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Belgium, France and Wales, as well as Ireland) who have interesting stories and products to share.

Celignis, along with Arigna Fuels, is the main sponsor of the event and several members of the Celignis team will be present at our exhibition stand where we will be happy to discuss our wide range of analytical and bioprocess development services for biochar stakeholders. The event coincides with the launch of the Celignis Biochar Hub, a section of our website that goes into great detail (15 web pages and 22,000 words) on our range of services.

Celignis CEO Dan Hayes will also be presenting at the event, with a presentation entitled 'Expanding the Market for Biochar with Analysis, Application Testing, and Upgrading'.

Click here to register for the event.

If you are unable to make it you can use the links below to access some information on our services for the biochar sector and please contact us if you would like to receive a copy of our presentation.

Celignis Biochar Trifold

Celignis Brochure

TBD

Click here to read about the different analysis packages that Celignis offers for the evaluation on biochars. These analyses cover properties relevant to a wide variety of applications, including soil amendment, carbon sequestration, bioenergy, and biomaterials.

To celebrate the arrival of our thermogravimetric (TGA) equipment, we are offering, for a limited time period, two TGA analyses for the price of one. Click here to read more about TGA analyses at Celignis and to see the various packages on offer.

To avail of this special offer please mention the code (TGA-AUGUST) in an email or when placing an order via the Celignis Database.

Celignis recently exhibited at IBioiC's annual conference, held in Glasgow on June 6-7.

During that event Lalitha, Celignis's CIO, gave a short 5 minute presentation on the EnXylaScope collaborative EU research project that Celignis is involved in.

You can view the presentation below or here on YouTube.

Today the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE-JU) released their annual work programme and budget for 2022. There is an indicative budget of 120 million Euros which will fund a total of 12 topics, comprising 5 Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs), 1 Coordinating and Supporting Action (CSA), 4 Demonstration-Scale projects, and 2 Flagships.

Celignis is a partner in 3 ongoing CBE projects: UNRAVEL and PERFECOAT are RIA (Research and Innovation Action) projects, whilst VAMOS is an Innovation Action project. Additionally, Celignis was a partner in the BIOrescue RIA project which was completed in 2019. Click here to read more about our involvements in these projects. They were funded as part of the Biomass Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) programme. The BBI-JU was the precursor to the CBE-JU for which 2022 will be the first year of operation.

We believe that we can make valuable contributions to projects covering a large number of the topics in the 2022 CBE work programme. These contributions are summarised here and there are also individual Celignis webpages for each of the call topics.

If you are preparing a CBE proposal this year and would like to engage with the Celignis team during the proposal preparation period then feel free to contact us and we will be happy to discuss in more detail how we can potentially contribute to the proposal and consortium. Celignis's Lalitha and Dan have years of experience putting together and writing proposals for EU funding and have also both worked as Expert Evaluators for the BBI-JU and so are very familiar with what is required for an excellent proposal and improved chances of being funded.

Celignis's BBI/CBE Projects

We are happy to be exhibiting at The World Biogas Expo 2022, taking place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK, on June 15-16.

We are at stand A501 and eager to talk about our wide range of analytical and bioprocess development services for the anaerobic digestion sector.

Here you can download soft copies of the brochure, AD trifold, and analysis trifold that we are distributing at the event.

The IBioIC Annual Conference makes a welcome return to Glasgow. The title of the event is "The Just Transition of Biotechnology - How sustainable development in industrial biotechnology can secure Scotland's path to Net Zero".

We are pleased to be exhibiting at the event, on June 6-7 at the Technology & Innovation Centre in Glasgow, UK. We look forward to discussing our range of analytical and bioprocess development services for bioeconomy stakeholders.

Our CIO Lalithawill also be giving a presentation at the event about our participation in EnXylaScope a collaborative research project funded by the the Horizon Europe programme.

Here you can download soft copies of the brochure, AD trifold, and analysis trifold that we are distributing at the event.

An introductory video to the EnXylaScope project (funded by Horizon Europe and technically led by Celignis) has been released. It has been prepared by our fellow consortium partner Loba and details the rationale for the project and the technical advances that the project will make, leading to an efficient and commercially-viable process for the extraction of xylan and its modification so that it can be incorporated into a range of consumer products.

Click here to learn more about the project and Celignis's central contributions to it and here to view the video on YouTube.

The newsletter covers the project's activities in the search for xylan debranching enzymes (a WP with extensive involvement from Celignis) and on the extraction and modification of xylans for consumer products (a WP led by Celignis). Click here to view the newsletter.

EnXylaScope is one of four research projects that were funded in the Horizon 2020 call FNR-16-2020 (Enzymes for more environment-friendly consumer products). Today a remote networking event is being held (CLIB HiPerln 2.0 Forum - Catalysing Alliances for Greener Products) at which representatives from each of the projects will present and discuss opportunities for collaboration. Celignis's Lalitha will be representing the EnXylaScope project and is looking forward to discussing the exciting opportunities for enzyme development and xylan valorisation offered by the project. Click here to read more about the event and to register.

Below is included an image of the solvent extract, containing the valuable pigment astaxanthin, obtained from microalgae that has been cultured and grown in our ALGALVANISE project. This output demonstrates successful achievement of a primary objective of Lalitha's project, that high value compounds can be obtained from algae that utilise waste streams from the anaerobic digestion sector as a nutrient and growth source.

Today represents Day 1 of the SteamBioAfrica project. It is an €11.7m, four-year, Innovation Action project funded by the EU's Horizon Europe programme. The tagline of the project is "Innovative Large-Scale Production of Affordable Clean Burning Solid Biofuel and Water in Southern Africa: Transforming Bush Encroachment from a Problem into a Secure and Sustainable Energy Source".

The project will address the problems experienced with bush encroachment in a number of southern African countries by using this biomass as a feedstock for a steam torrefaction process, developed in SteamBio (an earlier EU-funded project). Their are two main outputs of this process, a solid material which has improved properties, with regards to its use as a clean-burning fuel, over the original biomass, and a liquid condensate containing volatile components removed from the biomass during torrefaction.

Celignis will be an important analytical partner in the project, undertaking detailed compositional analyses of the feedstocks and process outputs as well as providing guidance and SOPs to the local partners for routine analyses (e.g. for proximate, ultimate, and calorific value analysis). Additionally, Celignis is the main partner responsible for the analysis of the liquid condensate fraction and for the evaluation of suitable applications and markets for it. This is expected to be a complex mixture of degradation products, particularly those coming from the extractives and hemciellulose fractions of the biomass. The profiling of this liquid stream will involve use of our extensive range of chromatography equipment, particularly our Agilent iFunnel 6550 QTOF-LC/MS device. Following this detailed analysis we will then consider which components within the liquid are of value and will consider applications for these (either in crude or refined forms) and will work on techniques for separation and purification. This aspect will follow a similar approach to our work in the UNRAVEL project (funded by the BBI-JU programme of Horizon 2020) where we identified betulin in birch bark as a high value chemical that warranted extraction and purification and then worked on developing a commercially-relevant approach to enable this.

Click here to read more about the SteamBioAfrica project and our involvement in it.

The image below shows the successful flocculation of algae by using chitosan. This was one of the key objectives of the ALGALVANISE project that involve's Celignis's Lalitha.

Traditionally, algal harvesting costs can comprise around 30% of the total operating costs of lage plants, hence reducing these will have a major positive effect on algal cultivation economics. Modern separators use 0.4 kWh/m3, a high energy requirement given average algal biomass concentration is only 1g/L. For separation to give a positive energy balance the energy required for harvesting needs to be reduced to 0.1 kWh/m3. ALGALVANISE targets such a low energy system through the use of coagulation/flocculation methods with the use of chitosan being one of these approaches.

Further work will be undertaken to optimise the process in order to find the minimum chitosan dosage to enhance bacterial flocculation in terms of yield and quality of the biomass without using any alkali agents.