Alberta Provincial agency helps fund hub for bioeconomy investments

In Canada, with funding from Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions, the Biorefining Conversions Network aims to become a hub for bioeconomy investments and a world class centre of excellence for biorefining and biomass conversions. Using a Campus Alberta approach over the next three years, the network will receive $3.8 million for business development and research that turns the province’s agricultural and forestry biomass into drop-in fuels and chemicals compatible with both traditional and emerging industries. Based at the University of Alberta, researchers will work to develop new technologies with commercial potential to convert a variety of biomass feedstocks into high-value products like biofuels, platform chemicals, industrial solvents, and bioplastics. The biorefining conversion technologies being developed at BCN are the same in concept as the refining technologies used by traditional oil refineries and leads to hydrocarbon-like fuels and chemicals that can ‘drop-in.’