TISED Newsletter 

Event

Resource recovery applications: approaches, tools and projects for the relaunch of rural economy

Friday, November 8, 2013 10:00to11:30
Wong Building Room 1050, 3610 rue University, Montreal, QC, H3A 0C5, CA
Price: 
Free

This seminar, open to all, is part of the Environmental and Water Resource Engineering Seminar Series. Join us as Professor Simon Barnabé discusses "Resource recovery applications: approaches, tools and projects for the relaunch of rural economy".

Topic summary:

As biomass is the basis of most rural economy, resource recovery could be the key to relaunch or revitalize rural communities affected by socio-economic problems such as local plant shutdown, decline of population, lack of business initiatives, and reluctance to change. In fact, diversifying and developing value-added products from fresh or residual biomass is becoming a new source of income for farmers, foresters, and waste management business. To support local community development and revitalization, the Industrial Research Chair on Environment & Biotechnology (CRIEB) of UQTR Foundation is dedicated his research and outreach efforts to environmental and biorefining innovations. In the research, industrial microbiology is used as a sustainable tool to recover value-added products from biomass, and thermal and chemical technologies are also applied when needed and economically justified. The prominent feature of all his projects is a multisectorial, colocation & socio-economic sustainability approach. In addition, a well-recognized “community scale biorefinery” approach is also applied, well adapted to the realities of Canadian local communities and. The approach is focused on in-house, on-site or local uses of co-products, locally available residues, local expertise and local infrastructures.  The presentation will introduce the major research approaches and tools used by the CRIEB through a demonstration of various active R&D projects. Case studies of agricultural, pulp & paper and forest residues based projects will be presented and discussed, as well as a new microalgae production project.


Biography (Simon Barnabé):  

Prof. Simon Barnabé is the holder of the Industrial Research Chair on environnement and biotechnology (CRIEB) of the Fondation de l’UQTR. He is a member of the Lignocellulosic Materials Research Center (LMRC) of UQTR. Prof. Barnabé is well known as an applied and industrial microbiologist specializing in value-added production from biowaste. His team, 12 graduate students, 2 postdocs and 1 professional, is dedicated to regional development through innovation and biomass/residues utilization. He is recognized for building university-college collaboration for enhancing the impact of research on regional development and education of highly qualified professional. He has built a CFI Laboratory on reactive fractioning of lignocellulosic residues for obtaining 2nd generation biofuels and value-added coproducts, and a 10-m3 Alga-FuelTM unit for microalgae production. Prof. Barnabé’s biorefinery work is conducted with partners from different sectors (pulp and paper, forestry, agricultural, aluminium, municipalities, etc.) and fractionation and transformation of agricultural residues, forest residues, algae biomass, recycled wood residues and pulp and paper sludge has been successfully achieved.

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