BioConcens: Biomass and bioenergy production agriculture – consequences for soil fertility, environment, spread of animal parasites and socio-economy

The research programme called “international research cooperation and organic integrity” was commenced for a period 2006-2010. It is coordinated by DARCOF (The Danish Research Centre for Organic Farming). The whole programme, with acronym DARCOF III, consists of 15 projects (http://www.darcof.dk/research/darcofiii/index.html). One of them is BIOCONCENS - Biomass and bioenergy production in organic farming – consequences for soil fertility, environment, spread of animal parasites and socio-economy (http://www.bioconcens.elr.dk/uk/). The production of bioenergy in organic agriculture (OA) can reduce its dependency of fossil fuels and decrease green house gasses emission; consequently it will increase sustainability of organic farms. Biorefinery concept based on co-production of biogas, bioethanol and protein fodder in organic farming will be developed within the BIOCONCENS project and the background for the project and the different work packages will be presented in this paper

Bioresour. Technol.

To investigate pretreatment demand for different parts of biomass, cotton stalk was separated into stem, branch and boll shell, which were treated by liquid hot water pretreatment (LHWP) with severity from 2.77 to 4.42. Based on weight loss (WL, w/w) mainly caused by hemicellulose removal, it was found that boll shell (WL, 46.93%) was more sensitive to LHWP than stem (WL, 38.85%). Although ethanol yield of 18.3, 16.27 and 21.08 g/100 g was achieved from stem, branch and boll shell with pretreatment severity at 4.42, ratio of ethanol yield to pretreatment energy input for particular parts was different. For boll shell and branch, the maximum ratio of ethanol yield to energy input were 1.37 and 1.33 g ethanol kJ(-1) with severity at 4.34, while it was 1.20 for stem at 3.66. This indicates that different pretreatment demands for different parts of plants should be considered in order to save pretreatment energy input. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.</p