The Global Center for Sustainable Bioproducts (GCSB) aims to develop environmentally and economically sustainable bio-derived composites and plastics, utilising waste biomass to replace petroleum and its derivatives. It started early this year, and is one of six worldwide Global Bioeconomy Centers which will run for 5 years with funding from the United States’ NSF and national agencies inluding UKRI.
The Center has a multi-national, multi-disciplinary project team, with leading researchers from the US, Canada, UK, Finland, Japan and Korea. The UK Lead is EBNet Co-I Prof Jhuma Sadhukhan, who is Associate Director and Co-Principal Investigator for the GCSB, with primary responsibility for life cycle analysis (LCA) and techno-economic assessment (TEA).
As part of her new role in the Center, our former EBNet Network Co-manager and now GCSB UK Manager Angela Bywater recently visited the University of Alberta (UofA) to meet the groups and tour the labs. The teams at Surrey and UofA have several joint tasks, including assessment of potential GHG emissions reductions.
Many thanks to Amit Kumar, Brigida Meza, Guru Ratan Satsangee, Nasiha Jahirhussain, Oluwadamilare Ogunjimi (Dami), Pali Rosha and Sandeep Agrawal for hosting the visit and sharing their great work on biorefineries, 3D printing with recycled plastics, biomaterial selection and processing, thermo-catalytic reforming, TEA, LCA, societal/community impacts and much more.
For more information on the Center, visit https://globalcsb.sites.utk.edu/
