Abstract written to Biogas Science for oral presentation. Regarding a new methodology for determining the energy efficiency, carbon footprint and environmental impact of anaerobic biogas production pathways. Additionally, results are given regarding the impacts of energy crops and waste products used as feedstock.
The biomass demand for the use as both renewable energy source and raw material for the biotechnology industry is increasing. Simultaneously, the supply of biomass is requested to become more costcompetitive. Innovative solutions for cost-effective biomass production should also avoid indirect land use changes and direct negative environmental effects. The main aim of this study is to identify the most promising innovative lignocellulosic cropping systems regarding environmental sustainability as well as social acceptance for different cost scenarios and different regions in Europe. To gather innovative cropping knowledge from around Europe ADVANCEFUEL organized a workshop. Participating Horizon 2020 projects presenting innovative approaches onlignocellulosic cropping systems included: FORBIO, MAGIC, BECOOL, LIBBIO, GRACE, and SEEMLA. Data was collected from field studies of the participating projects prior to the workshop and later presented in an aggregated way as a basis for discussions. This approach incorporates the knowledge gained in over 60 study cases conducted in 12 different countries. Under these study cases, 16 different lignocellulosic crops were covered. This field based knowledge can be used to validate spatial assessments of sustainable biomass production potentials in Europe.
The increasing share of renewable production like wind and PV poses new challenges to our energy system. The intermittent behavior and lack of controllability on these sources requires flexibility measures like storage and conversion. Production, consumption, transportation, storage and conversion systems become more intertwined. The increasing complexity of the system requires new control strategies to fulfill existing requirements.The SynergyS project addresses the main question how to operate increasingly complex energy systems in a controllable, robust, safe, affordable, and reliable way. Goal of the project is to develop and test a smart control system for a multi-commodity energy system (MCES), with electricity, hydrogen and heat. In scope are an industrial cluster (Chemistry Park Delfzijl) and a residential cluster (Leeuwarden) and their mutual interaction. Results are experimentally tested in two real-life demo-sites scale models: Centre of Expertise Energy (EnTranCe) and The Green Village (TU Delft) represent respectively the industrial and residential cluster.The result will be a market-driven control system to operate a multi-commodity energy system, integrating the industrial and residential cluster. The experimental setup is a combination of physical demo-site assets complemented with (digital) asset models. Experimental validation is based on a demo-scenario including real time data, simulated data and several stress tests.In this session we’ll elaborate more on the project and present (preliminary) results on the testing criteria, scenarios and experimental setup.
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Agricultural/horticultural products account for 9% of Dutch gross domestic product. Yearly expansion of production involves major challenges concerning labour costs and plant health control. For growers, one of the most urgent problems is pest detection, as pests cause up to 10% harvest loss, while the use of chemicals is increasingly prohibited. For consumers, food safety is increasingly important. A potential solution for both challenges is frequent and automated pest monitoring. Although technological developments such as propeller-based drones and robotic arms are in full swing, these are not suitable for vertical horticulture (e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers). A better solution for less labour intensive pest detection in vertical crop horticulture, is a bio-inspired FW-MAV: Flapping Wings Micro Aerial Vehicle. Within this project we will develop tiny FW-MAVs inspired by insect agility, with high manoeuvrability for close plant inspection, even through leaves without damage. This project focusses on technical design, testing and prototyping of FW-MAV and on autonomous flight through vertically growing crops in greenhouses. The three biggest technical challenges for FW-MAV development are: 1) size, lower flight speed and hovering; 2) Flight time; and 3) Energy efficiency. The greenhouse environment and pest detection functionality pose additional challenges such as autonomous flight, high manoeuvrability, vertical take-off/landing, payload of sensors and other equipment. All of this is a multidisciplinary challenge requiring cross-domain collaboration between several partners, such as growers, biologists, entomologists and engineers with expertise in robotics, mechanics, aerodynamics, electronics, etc. In this project a co-creation based collaboration is established with all stakeholders involved, integrating technical and biological aspects.
Horticulture crops and plants use only a limited part of the solar spectrum for their growth, the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR); even within PAR, different spectral regions have different functionality for plant growth, and so different light spectra are used to influence different properties of the plant, such as leaves, fruiting, longer stems and other plant properties. Artificial lighting, typically with LEDs, has been used to provide these specified spectra per plant, defined by their light recipe. This light is called steering light. While the natural sunlight provides a much more sustainable and abundant form of energy, however, the solar spectrum is not tuned towards specific plant needs. In this project, we capitalize on recent breakthroughs in nanoscience to optimally shape the solar spectrum, and produce a spectrally selective steering light, i.e. convert the energy of the entire solar spectrum into a spectrum most useful for agriculture and plant growth to utilize the sustainable solar energy to its fullest, and save on artificial lighting and electricity. We will take advantage of the developed light recipes and create a sustainable alternative to LED steering light, using nanomaterials to optimally shape the natural sunlight spectrum, while maintaining the increased yields. As a proof of concept, we are targeting the compactness of ornamental plants and seek to steer the plants’ growth to reduce leaf extension and thus be more valuable. To realize this project the Peter Schall group at the UvA leads this effort together with the university spinout, SolarFoil, whose expertise lies in the development of spectral conversion layers for horticulture. Renolit - a plastic manufacturer and Chemtrix, expert in flow synthesis, provide expertise and technical support to scale the foil, while Ludvig-Svensson, a pioneer in greenhouse climate screens, provides the desired light specifications and tests the foil in a controlled setting.
