News

Today the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE-JU) released their annual work programme and budget for 2022. There is an indicative budget of 120 million Euros which will fund a total of 12 topics, comprising 5 Research and Innovation Actions (RIAs), 1 Coordinating and Supporting Action (CSA), 4 Demonstration-Scale projects, and 2 Flagships.

Celignis is a partner in 3 ongoing CBE projects: UNRAVEL and PERFECOAT are RIA (Research and Innovation Action) projects, whilst VAMOS is an Innovation Action project. Additionally, Celignis was a partner in the BIOrescue RIA project which was completed in 2019. Click here to read more about our involvements in these projects. They were funded as part of the Biomass Based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI-JU) programme. The BBI-JU was the precursor to the CBE-JU for which 2022 will be the first year of operation.

We believe that we can make valuable contributions to projects covering a large number of the topics in the 2022 CBE work programme. These contributions are summarised here and there are also individual Celignis webpages for each of the call topics.

If you are preparing a CBE proposal this year and would like to engage with the Celignis team during the proposal preparation period then feel free to contact us and we will be happy to discuss in more detail how we can potentially contribute to the proposal and consortium. Celignis's Lalitha and Dan have years of experience putting together and writing proposals for EU funding and have also both worked as Expert Evaluators for the BBI-JU and so are very familiar with what is required for an excellent proposal and improved chances of being funded.

Celignis's BBI/CBE Projects

We are happy to be exhibiting at The World Biogas Expo 2022, taking place at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK, on June 15-16.

We are at stand A501 and eager to talk about our wide range of analytical and bioprocess development services for the anaerobic digestion sector.

Here you can download soft copies of the brochure, AD trifold, and analysis trifold that we are distributing at the event.

The IBioIC Annual Conference makes a welcome return to Glasgow. The title of the event is "The Just Transition of Biotechnology - How sustainable development in industrial biotechnology can secure Scotland's path to Net Zero".

We are pleased to be exhibiting at the event, on June 6-7 at the Technology & Innovation Centre in Glasgow, UK. We look forward to discussing our range of analytical and bioprocess development services for bioeconomy stakeholders.

Our CIO Lalithawill also be giving a presentation at the event about our participation in EnXylaScope a collaborative research project funded by the the Horizon Europe programme.

Here you can download soft copies of the brochure, AD trifold, and analysis trifold that we are distributing at the event.

An introductory video to the EnXylaScope project (funded by Horizon Europe and technically led by Celignis) has been released. It has been prepared by our fellow consortium partner Loba and details the rationale for the project and the technical advances that the project will make, leading to an efficient and commercially-viable process for the extraction of xylan and its modification so that it can be incorporated into a range of consumer products.

Click here to learn more about the project and Celignis's central contributions to it and here to view the video on YouTube.

The newsletter covers the project's activities in the search for xylan debranching enzymes (a WP with extensive involvement from Celignis) and on the extraction and modification of xylans for consumer products (a WP led by Celignis). Click here to view the newsletter.

EnXylaScope is one of four research projects that were funded in the Horizon 2020 call FNR-16-2020 (Enzymes for more environment-friendly consumer products). Today a remote networking event is being held (CLIB HiPerln 2.0 Forum - Catalysing Alliances for Greener Products) at which representatives from each of the projects will present and discuss opportunities for collaboration. Celignis's Lalitha will be representing the EnXylaScope project and is looking forward to discussing the exciting opportunities for enzyme development and xylan valorisation offered by the project. Click here to read more about the event and to register.

Today represents Day 1 of the SteamBioAfrica project. It is an €11.7m, four-year, Innovation Action project funded by the EU's Horizon Europe programme. The tagline of the project is "Innovative Large-Scale Production of Affordable Clean Burning Solid Biofuel and Water in Southern Africa: Transforming Bush Encroachment from a Problem into a Secure and Sustainable Energy Source".

The project will address the problems experienced with bush encroachment in a number of southern African countries by using this biomass as a feedstock for a steam torrefaction process, developed in SteamBio (an earlier EU-funded project). Their are two main outputs of this process, a solid material which has improved properties, with regards to its use as a clean-burning fuel, over the original biomass, and a liquid condensate containing volatile components removed from the biomass during torrefaction.

Celignis will be an important analytical partner in the project, undertaking detailed compositional analyses of the feedstocks and process outputs as well as providing guidance and SOPs to the local partners for routine analyses (e.g. for proximate, ultimate, and calorific value analysis). Additionally, Celignis is the main partner responsible for the analysis of the liquid condensate fraction and for the evaluation of suitable applications and markets for it. This is expected to be a complex mixture of degradation products, particularly those coming from the extractives and hemciellulose fractions of the biomass. The profiling of this liquid stream will involve use of our extensive range of chromatography equipment, particularly our Agilent iFunnel 6550 QTOF-LC/MS device. Following this detailed analysis we will then consider which components within the liquid are of value and will consider applications for these (either in crude or refined forms) and will work on techniques for separation and purification. This aspect will follow a similar approach to our work in the UNRAVEL project (funded by the BBI-JU programme of Horizon 2020) where we identified betulin in birch bark as a high value chemical that warranted extraction and purification and then worked on developing a commercially-relevant approach to enable this.

Click here to read more about the SteamBioAfrica project and our involvement in it.

Today marks the first official day of the BIO4Africa project. It is a four-year €9m RIA (Research and Innovation Action) project, funded by the EU's Horizon Europe programme involving 25 partners from the EU and Africa. It focuses on the demonstration of sustainable, circular solutions and business models, suitable for African countries, based on the valorisation of a variety of local feedstocks.

Celignis is an important partner in the project, having a key role early-on with regards to the compositional analysis and evaluation of a wide variety of different local feedstocks. These data will allow decisions to be made with regards to which feedstocks are suitable for which technologies leading to a subset of feedstocks being selected for processing. The technologies that will be deployed in the project include: pyrolysis (for the production of biochar); hydrothermal carbonisation; and a green-biorefinery (the GRASSA process, which has previously been demonstrated in Ireland in the Biorefinery Glas project).

After the most appropriate feedstocks have been selected for each technology, samples will be sent to the European technology providers where initial tests will be undertaken in order to understand how these feedstocks behave, allowing for fine-tuning and process modifications to improve process efficiencies for each feedstock. Following these trials arrangements will be made for the equipment to be shipped to Africa where the technologies will be deployed at a number of locations, processing locally-available biomass. Celignis will also play an important role in the project at these stages, being responsible for the analysis of the outputs (e.g. biochar, HTC char, press-cake, etc.) of the various technologies.

Click here to read more about the project and Celignis's involvement in it.

Today we were happy to take part in the kick-off meeting for our EnXylaScope project. There were fruitful discussions between the project's partners on the work to be undertaken in the various work packages and on how the scientific and technical progress will be guided by the clear commercial opportunities presented by xylan as a polymer and the range of markets for which it can be an important component in consumer products. The discovery and application of novel enzymes to facilitate this is a key component of the proejct.

Click here to read more about the project and the important contributions that Celignis is making towards it.

We are happy to announce that Celignis received two awards in the 2021 Irish Lab Awards. These awards are detailed below:

Innovation of the Year Award - for our technological developments for polysaccharide extraction and modification and our advances in the provision of Bioprocess Development Services for clients.

Laboratory Staff Member of the Year Award - For Laitha, our Chief Innovation Officer, recognising the massive constributions she has made to the company in the last year in terms of innovations, enhanced services to our clients, and business development.

Click here to see the list of finalists and awardees in each category.

Celignis's Lalitha and Dan are, together with Andre Zomeren (from coordinator TNO), today representing the BBI project UNRAVEL at the BBI JU Stakeholder Forum 2019 being held at the Egg Congress and Meeting Center in Brussels. This event provides BBI projects' partners the opportunity to meet each other, and the wider public, to facilitate collaboration opportunities and commercial progress of the technologies being developed.

We are happy to discuss with you the advances made by partner TNO on the project's FABIOLA pretreatment/fractionation progress and by Celignis on the characterisation and removal of extractives, targeting recovery and purification of an identified high value component, and on the rapid analysis models developed by Celignis for the inputs and outputs of the process. We will also be happy to discuss the important work in the project being done by other partners.

We are located at Stand 5C so come say hello!

Click here to read more about the UNRAVEL project.

ICT-BIOCHAIN is a BBI-JU (Horizon 2020) project that targets the identification of opportunities for ICT to increase the efficiency of biomass supply chains for the bio-based industry.

On the 16th of October, as part of Bioeconomy Ireland Week 2019 the project's Irish partners hosted a Knowledge Transfer Demonstration Day where companies with novel ICT, IoT and Industry 4.0 solutions for the bio-based sector demonstrated their technologies in a real operating environment.

Celignis was one of those demonstrating companies and we welcomed visitors to our labs where we provided a demonstration of our Near-Infrared Spectroscopy rapid biomass analysis models, using proprietary software, as well as our provision of biomethane potential (BMP) data for the anaerobic digestion sector.

Click here to read more about the event.

We are looking for someone to join the Celignis team and spearhead our growth and expansion into new markets and territories.

The position has a salary of €69.5k for one year, plus €20k of training and €3.5k in relocation funds.

Please click here for further information on the position and how to apply.

Today marks the first day of the BBI-JU project VAMOS. It is a €13.7m Innovation Action (IA) project, funded as part of the EU's Horizon 2020 research programme, that involves 11 partners.

The project is based on the Fiberight process for the valorisation of municipal solid waste. In particular, VAMOS will focus on using the separated paper-waste fraction as a substrate for conversion to sugars which are then subsequently fermented to lactic acid.

The process involves a number of stages, including pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation. At each stage there will be an input and a number of output streams. For example, the enzymatic hydrolysis process will produce a liquid fraction containing the hydrolysed sugars and a solid fraction containing the non-hydrolysed portion of the biomass.

Celignis plays a key role in the project with regards to the analysis of the solid fractions at a number of stages in the process. Our initial work focuses on the development of rapid analysis models, using near infrared spectroscopy equipment located in our labs, that allow the composition of the material to be predicted based solely on the NIR spectra collected from it. This allows the analysis time to be reduced from weeks to seconds.

Developing these models requires that we first analyse, via standard chemical approaches, a wide variety of samples, covering the variability expected from the process. Once a suitably large dataset has been built then the first iterations of the models can be developed. This is an approach we have successfully demonstrated to date in other BBI projects (BIOrescue and UNRAVEL) at the RIA (up to TRL-5) level for both feedstocks and process outputs.

Excitingly, VAMOS gives Celignis the opportunity to demonstrate its NIR models at a higher TRL level (TRL-7). As part of this, later on in the project, once the demo-scale biorefinery has been built and is operational, we will install similar NIR equipment within the demo plant (which is expected to be located in the UK) and set up customised software that will allow plant operators, with no technical expertise in NIR or chemometrics, to routinely analyse the inputs and outputs of the process.

We will then work with plant operators over the course of a year, devleoping incremental improvements in the accuracy of the models and in the performance of the customised software. This work is expected to lead to the development of an integrated software package and commercial proposition for replicating this approach at other biorefineries, operating at demonstration or commercial scales.

Click here to read more about the project and Celignis's involvement in it.