Environmental Performance Index

There is an index called "Environmental Performance Index", which covers several environmental factors including Access to Sanitation, Access to Water, Indoor Air Pollution, Outdoor Air Pollution, Environmental Burden of Disease, Forest Cover Change, Fisheries, Marine Trophic Index, Trawling Intensity, Agricultural Water Intensity and subsidies, Pesticide Regulation, Greenhouse Gas Emissions Per Capita, CO2 Emissions Per Electricity Generation, Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions Intensity, Nitrogen Oxides Emissions, Ecosystem Ozone, Sulfur Dioxide Emissions, Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compound Emissions, Water Quality Index, Water Stress Index, Water Scarcity Index, and Biodiversity & Habitat. In this index, Sweden is ranked as number 4 among 163 countries in 2010. Let's hope the polititions in different countries can benefit from such index and improve the environment and quality of life in their countries.

(Environmental Performance Index. Click on the figure to visit their website)

Biogas for fuel or electricity?

Biogas is a natural product of biological activities in the absence of oxygen. This gas is composed mainly of methane (natural gas) and carbon dioxide and traces of other gases such as hydrogen sulfite. The biogas is produced almost all around the world naturally or under controlled condition. The major applications of biogas are for heating, cooking, electricity production and car fuel. While many other countries are interested to electricity, Sweden is investing more and more on biogas as fuel for cars, buses and trucks. Here in Borås, we have 59 city buses all run only on biogas (no diesel and no gasoline). In order to make the fuel from raw biogas, we just have to separate CO2 and other gases (water scrubbing) to get at least 97% methane purity and also dry the gas from water vapor. A simple process for this purification is just washing the gas with water (to dissolve CO2) and then pass it through zeolite to dry it. It is a simple process to convert the wastes to a fuel for your car!



(A water scrubbing unit to purify methane in raw biogas. The unit is located in Trollhättan in Sweden)

From kitchen to animal feed in Japan

Last week I was in Japan in order to start some collaborations with some Japanese companies and research institutes. In Japan, there is generally no biogas from wastes and they just burn the waste with no product (as we produce district heat and electricity here in Sweden). I had a chance to visit Biomass Expo in Tokyo. One of the companies (Kyoritsu) had an interesting simple solution for hotels, restaurants or juice companies. They just dried the waste materials by heating in e.g. vacuum sulimation. The results was some kinds of granules that they said it is used for animal feed.

(Food recycling soluion of the Japanese company. The picture is from their website, Sorry no English text)

Spirit of dates

Date is a fruit of date palm, which is widely planted in hot and dry climate regions of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. It is consider as an edible holy fruit with a number of interesting properties. Annual production of dates is about 7,000,000 tons, by which about 2,000,000 tons/year are wastes. We have recently published an article about it, in which the specifications and some technical aspects of waste dates are considered. These wastes are full of glucose and fructose and can be a source of many different products such as "spirit"!


(Waste dates, as the raw materials for ethanol production in a novel plant in Isfahan, Iran. The photo is taken by my friend, Dr. Keikhosro Karimi)

Human development for better waste recovery

"People are the real wealth of a nation", it is the conclusion of the latest Human Development Report. The report shows different aspects of the human developments, which includes several positive points in the last 20 years, but also some aspects that were not well developed. I believe "People and the Management are the real wealth of a nation". A good education and human development together with a right management of a nation together results in great development. Waste management and resource recovery is part of this system, which need development in both social as well as technical aspects.


(Fig. 5.9 of the report that shows countries with higher multidimensional poverty headcounts
often have higher intensity of deprivation)

Hand in Hand for children in India

There are tens of thousands children in India who are scavengers and survive by collecting some valuable materials from waste dumping areas. There was recently a TV report at SVT about an organization called "Hand in Hand" who managed working of the adults in the scanvenger families and send their children to the school. It is an important job and might drastically improve the future of these children. I wish them good luck!


(Thanks to my friend Jessica Magnusson for the tips on this report)

Fish feed from wastes

With a global fish production/catch of about 100 million tons per year, fish feed is being more important in our daily life. Considering salmon as an example, we need 2,5 kg fish feed for producing each kg of the fish. We together with our parner companies, Cewatech AB and Nordic Paper in Säffle are developing zygomycetes fungi as fish feed in a large pilot plant. The pilot is now producing the fungus from the byproducts of the pulp industries, and the product is going to be tested by fishfeed indutries in large scales. These organisms are safe for humas as being used as daily food (tempeh) in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia for centuries. Let's hope this development lead to prevent catching small fishes for feeding large fishes.


(A zygomycete fungus used in this work. The picture was taken by our PhD student Patrik Lennartsson)

A PhD thesis on biological superabsorbents

Here is a PhD thesis by our former PhD student Akram Zamani about Superabsorbent Polymers from the Cell Wall of Zygomycetes Fungi. Akram started her PhD in Borås 2006 and defended her thesis in Oct. 2010. Here are the published articles from her thesis:

1- Determination of glucosamine and N-acetyl glucosamine in fungal cell walls. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2008; 56 (18): 8314-8318.

2- Extraction and precipitation of chitosan from cell wall of zygomycetes fungi by dilute sulfuric acid. Biomacromolecules 2007; 8 (12): 3786-3790.

3- Production of low molecular weight chitosan by hot dilute sulfuric acid. BioResources 2010; 5 (3): 1554-1564.

4- Temperature shifts for extraction and purification of zygomycetes chitosan with dilute sulfuric acid. International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2010; 11(8): 2976-2987.

5- A new foaming technique for production of superabsorbents from carboxymethyl chitosan. Carbohydrate Polymers 2010; 80 (4): 1091-1101.

6- Effects of partial dehydration and freezing temperature on the morphology and water binding capacity of carboxymethyl chitosan-based superabsorbents. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2010; 49: 8094-8099.

7- Effect of carboxymethylation conditions on water binding capacity of chitosan-based superabsorbents. Carbohydrate Research, in press.

A PhD thesis on Citrus Waste Biorefinery

Here is a PhD thesis of our former PhD student Mohammad Pourbafrani, about Citrus Waste Biorefinery: Process Development, Simulation and Economic Analysis. He came to Borås as PhD student in 2006 and was graduated in May 2010. Here are the published papers from his thesis:

1- Protective Effect of Encapsulation in Fermentation of Limonene-contained Media and Orange Peel Hydrolyzate, International Journal of Molecular Science, 2007, 8(8), 777-787.
2- Optimization Study of Citrus Wastes Saccharification by Dilute-Acid hydrolysis, BioResources, 2008,3(1),108-122.
3- Production of biofuels, limonene and pectin from citrus wastes, Bioresource Technology, 2010,101(11), 4246-4250
4- Process design and economic analysis of a citrus waste biorefinery with biofuels and limonene as products, Bioresource Technology, 101(19): 7382-7388