Sweden 2050: Fossil- or renewable-fuel free?

Sweden has recently announced its goal to become the first fossil-fuel free in the world. It is an exciting news. When looking at the energy profile of the country, it has been pretty successful in using renewable energy for electricity, and heating/chilling in the households, buildings and industries. However, with ca 13% renewable in the fuel market for the transportation, Sweden has many difficulties to reach this ambitious goal.

However, with the current oil price, it seems the politicians are passive and just make wrong decision on everything, particularly considering the first time that environmental party contribute to the government. They increased the tax on ethanol fuel so practically nobody tank with ethanol (E85) any longer as it is now the most expensive fuel in the market. When it comes to biogas, it not better. The politicians in Gothenburg city decided to shut down the GoBiGas project (thermal production of biogas via gasification) and also the biogas from digestion is also too expensive.

The conclusion is that with this oil price and passive politicians, particularly "environmental party", it seems we will consume more fossil fuel in the future and Sweden will be more "renewable-fuel free" in 2050!

PhD Thesis: Biogas from slaughterhouse wastes

Now it is the fifth and last defense from our group in biotechnology this year. Jhosané Pagés Díaz who is going to defend next week, came from Cuba to Sweden as a sandwich PhD student four years ago. She worked hard on a difficult subject that is about "Biogas from slaughterhouse waste" where she studied mixture interactions in co-digestion. In simple words, this waste has a lot of fats and proteins, but bacteria - just like humans - need a mixture of food and nutrients just to be happy, grow and produce a lot of biogas. So, she tried to make a happy soup for the bacteria. She was also happy today while nailing her thesis and will defend it next week. I wish her a happy ending...

Here is the link to her thesis that also include these papers:

- Co-digestion of different waste mixtures from agro-industrial activities: Kinetic evaluation and synergetic effects

- Co-digestion of bovine slaughterhouse wastes, cow manure, various crops and municipal solid waste at thermophilic conditions: a comparison with specific case running at mesophilic conditions

- Anaerobic co-digestion of solid slaughterhouse wastes with agro-residues: Synergistic and antagonistic interactions determined in batch digestion assays

- Semi-continuous co-digestion of solid cattle slaughterhouse wastes with other waste streams: Interactions within the mixtures and methanogenic community structure