Crops grown on contaminated land co… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

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By 2050, the world-wide bioeconomy will involve up to 24 billion tonnes of biomass, but the sector ought to overcome important hurdles to reach its entire probable. These contain a absence of farmer self confidence in the sector for biomass, a absence of provide of biomass to the business and the will need to assure that land for biomass crops does not contend with land used for foods production.

The GRACE venture, funded by the Bio-based mostly Industries Joint Enterprise (BBI JU), a community-non-public partnership involving the EU and the business, is advancing the bioeconomy by bringing jointly 22 players from the agriculture sector, bioindustry and experts. They are demonstrating the large-scale production of novel miscanthus hybrid crops and hemp crop varieties on marginal and contaminated land as well as the use of the biomass in making a huge assortment of goods.

‘There are hundreds of thousands of hectares of marginal and contaminated land in Europe which could be used to deliver feedstock for the bioeconomy without the need of competing with foods production and at the identical time contribute towards revitalising rural economies,’ claims Moritz Wagner, GRACE venture supervisor and a researcher at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. ‘GRACE will display that bio-based mostly benefit chains can contribute to climate-adjust mitigation by changing carbon-intense fossil-based mostly goods with biobased goods with minimal CO2 emissions.’

Hemp and miscanthus

The venture is concentrating on two adaptable crops – miscanthus and hemp. These can be used in a huge assortment of apps central to the bioeconomy such as simple chemicals, biofuels, bio-based mostly creating supplies, composites and prescribed drugs.

Project experts have already formulated a new style of miscanthus crop that can be developed from seed. Beforehand, miscanthus was planted working with rhizomes a high-priced planting approach. The new varieties are developed to be of a better quality, to be cold- and drought-resistant and to have identical yields to the standard miscanthus crop. Researchers are also studying the impacts of expanding miscanthus on land polluted by heavy metals to see the extent to which the pollutants are taken up by the vegetation.

GRACE’s miscanthus crops can be used in creating insulation, light-weight concrete – or concrete not used for load-bearing reasons – bioplastics, bioethanol, chemicals and solvents used in industrial procedures and buyer goods, in textiles, cars and electronics and in composite fibres.

The venture has already demonstrated bioethanol production from miscanthus straw at a pre-professional bioethanol refinery in Straubing, Germany. It is also operating on working with the extracted lignocellulosic sugars from miscanthus straw to generate biochemicals for building bioplastics.

A use for by-goods

The GRACE venture is also discovering how to use by-goods – for illustration, the production of light-weight concrete working with milled miscanthus, and miscanthus dust, which can be used in paper production. Just one venture spouse is pursuing this working with miscanthus crops developed on unused land at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

In the meantime, GRACE’s experts have successfully used unique factors of hemp biomass such as cannabidiol, a non-psychotropic cannabinoid, which is below improvement for the treatment method of epilepsy.

The venture has founded more than 60 hectares of miscanthus and hemp on contaminated and abandoned land. GRACE scientists hope to prolong the project’s momentum outside of its formal endpoint by means of its ‘industry panel’, which connects unique sectors of the bioindustry to academics operating in the subject of biomass.

This venture was funded by BBI JU, a EUR 3.7-billion community-non-public partnership involving the EU and the Bio-based mostly Industries Consortium (BIC).