The Road to Bring FDCA and PEF to the Market

Biobased polymers and materials are desperately needed to replace fossil-based materials in the world’s transition to a more sustainable lifestyle. In this article, Avantium describes the path from invention towards commercialization of their YXY(®) plants-to-plastics Technology, which catalytically converts plant-based sugars into FDCA—the chemical building block for PEF (polyethylene furanoate). PEF is a plant-based, highly recyclable plastic, with superior performance properties compared to today’s widely used petroleum-based packaging materials. The myriad of topics that must be addressed in the process of bringing a new monomer and polymer to market are discussed, including process development and application development, regulatory requirements, IP protection, commercial partnerships, by-product valorisation, life cycle assessment (LCA), recyclability and circular economy fit, and end-of-life. Advice is provided for others considering embarking on a similar journey, as well as an outlook on the next, exciting steps towards large-scale production of FDCA and PEF at Avantium’s Flagship Plant and beyond

Electricity management in the production of leadaAcid batteries: the industrial case of a production plant in Colombia

Electricity stands as the main energy used for lead-acid battery (LAB) manufacturing. This study introduces an energy management methodology to address the electricity consumption in lead-acid battery plants, improving efficiency standards. The “equivalent battery production” is introduced to define the energy performance criteria to be met in the different production sections of the battery plant. The methodology combines the guidelines of the ISO 50001 standard with the energy management framework for manufacturing plants. The result is a structured approach for detecting inefficiencies and pinpointing their sources. The management methodology was implemented during 2016. In the formation area 222 MWh were saved during 2016. This saving accounts for 3.9% less electricity than forecasted by the energy baseline of the area. Additionally, the emission of some 40 tCO2.eq. associated with the generation of the electricity production were saved. Moreover, at plant level 424 MWh were saved, which account for 3.6% less electricity than forecasted by the energy baseline of the plant. In total, around 76 tCO2.eq. were saved as a result of the electricity savings in the plant

Energy management in the formation of light, starter, and ignition lead-acid batteries

This paper discusses energy management in the formation process of lead-acid batteries. Battery production and electricity consumption in during battery formation in a battery plant were analyzed over a 4-year period. The main parameters affecting the energy performance of battery production were identified and different actions to improve it were proposed. Furthermore, an Energy Performance Indicator (EnPI), based on the electricity consumption of battery formation (a difficult and rather expensive parameter to measure), is introduced to assess its energy efficiency. Therefore, a Soft Sensor to measure the electricity consumption in real-time (based on the voltage and current measured during battery formation) and to calculate the EnPI is developed. Moreover, Energy Management (EM), aided by the use of energy baselines and control charts is implemented to assess the energy performance of battery formation, allowing the implementation of rapid corrective actions towards higher efficiency standards. This resulted on the average in a 4.3% reduction of the electricity consumption in battery formation

Bacterially assembled biopolyester nanobeads for removing cadmium from water

Cadmium (Cd)-contaminated waterbodies are a worldwide concern for the environment, impacting human health. To address the need for efficient, sustainable and cost-effective remediation measures, we developed innovative Cd bioremediation agents by engineering Escherichia coli to assemble poly(3-hydroxybutyric acid) (PHB) beads densely coated with Cd-binding peptides. This was accomplished by translational fusion of Cd-binding peptides to the N- or C-terminus of a PHB synthase that catalyzes PHB synthesis and mediates assembly of Cd2 or Cd1 coated PHB beads, respectively. Cd1 beads showed greater Cd adsorption with 441 nmol Cd mg-1 bead mass when compared to Cd2 beads (334 nmol Cd mg-1 bead-mass) and plain beads (238 nmol Cd mg-1 bead-mass). The Cd beads were not ecotoxic and did attenuate Cd-spiked solutions toxicity. Overall, the bioengineered beads provide a means to remediate Cd-contaminated sites, can be cost-effectively produced at large scale, and offer a biodegradable and safe alternative to synthetic ecotoxic treatments.publishe

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Jet size dependence of single jet suppression in lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s(NN)) = 2.76 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Measurements of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions at the LHC provide direct sensitivity to the physics of jet quenching. In a sample of lead-lead collisions at sqrt(s) = 2.76 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of approximately 7 inverse microbarns, ATLAS has measured jets with a calorimeter over the pseudorapidity interval |eta| < 2.1 and over the transverse momentum range 38 < pT < 210 GeV. Jets were reconstructed using the anti-kt algorithm with values for the distance parameter that determines the nominal jet radius of R = 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5. The centrality dependence of the jet yield is characterized by the jet "central-to-peripheral ratio," Rcp. Jet production is found to be suppressed by approximately a factor of two in the 10% most central collisions relative to peripheral collisions. Rcp varies smoothly with centrality as characterized by the number of participating nucleons. The observed suppression is only weakly dependent on jet radius and transverse momentum. These results provide the first direct measurement of inclusive jet suppression in heavy ion collisions and complement previous measurements of dijet transverse energy imbalance at the LHC.Comment: 15 pages plus author list (30 pages total), 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Physics Letters B. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at http://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/HION-2011-02

The tricot citizen science approach applied to on-farm variety evaluation: methodological progress and perspectives

Tricot (triadic comparisons of technologies) is a citizen science approach for testing technology options in their use environments, which is being applied to on-farm testing of crop varieties. Over the last years, important progress has been made on the tricot methodology of which an overview is given. Trial dimensions depend on several factors but tricot implies that plot size is as small as possible to include farmers with small plots (yet avoiding excessive interplot competition) while many locations are included to ensure representativeness of trials. Gender and socio-economic work is focused on better household characterization and recruitment strategies that move beyond sex-aggregation to address aspects of intersectionality. Ethics, privacy and traditional knowledge aspects will be addressed through expanding digital support in this direction. Genetic gain estimates need to be addressed by yield measurements, which can be generated by farmers themselves. There is conceptual clarity about the needs for documentation of trials and publishing data but this aspect requires further digital development. Much progress has been made on the ClimMob digital platform already, which is user friendly and supports trials in the main steps and includes open-source data analytics packages. Further improvements need to be made to ensure better integration with other tools. A next step will be the development of scaling strategies that involve business development. An important input into these strategies are economic studies, which are ongoing