Open Lectures Seminar: Sub/Supercritical Water Innovation meets Forest Industry

Join us to engage and discuss with industry and academia experts on the potential of the advantageous Sub/supercritical water processes to act as platform technologies for circular bio-economy consumption models in the near future.

> Seminar Program

> List of Speakers

The Thermodynamics and Combustion Technology (TCT) laboratory along with Aalto Energy Platform would like to invite all interested colleagues to join the open lectures seminar titled: Sub/supercritical water innovation meets the forest industry. The seminar involves two main tracks. In the morning, after welcome greetings by the host Prof. Mika Järvinen and a keynote presentation by Prof. Herbert Sixta, industry experts from Metsä Fibre, Neste and St1 Renewables will present and join a panel discussion on circular economy practices within their own respective companies. This is followed, after lunch, with experts from leading EU research institutes presenting the latest developments and progress in the field of Sub/supercritical water innovation for energy and materials production.

Registration is open and for free, through this link. (Available until Friday 25^th of May, 15:00)

If you have any questions, please contact Mohamed Magdeldin via mohamed.magd@aalto.fi.

Sub/supercritical water processes, referred to in some literature as hydrothermal treatment methods, are the processing of organic slurries at elevated temperatures and pressures, in the proximity of water’s critical point of 374 ⁰C and 221 bar. The interacting thermo-physical properties of slurry constituents vary significantly and present several processing opportunities compared to ambient treatment methods. For biomass refining and particularly lignocellulose, a versatile set of conversion pathways, that include water acting, as a solvent and/or reactant and/or catalysis, could be fine-tuned to produce a wide range of value-added bio- fuels, chemicals and materials.

Seminar Program

Speakers

	Mika Järvinen Järvinen is a professor in Aalto School of Engineering and a Finnish academy research fellow on the project “Environmental Protection by Crushing Numbers - Towards the Next Generation Process Simulators for Energy, Materials and Economy Efficient Processes”.
	Herbert Sixta Sixta is the head of the department of Bioproducts and Biosystems at Aalto University. He has 30 years of experience in industrial research on pulp and cellulose chemistry. His core research interest comprises the use of tailored ionic liquids for the selective dissolution of different biopolymers as a novel way of biomass fractionation.
	Katariina Kemppainen Kemppainen is currently a development manager at Metsä Fibre Oy. She primarily works on the development and realization of existing pulp mills side streams valorization into a wide range of commercial bioproducts.
	Ville Paasikallio Paasikallio is a currently a researcher at Neste Oil. His expertise covers the research and development of liquid fuels production from forestry-based feedstock via the catalytic pyrolysis process.
	Patrick Pitkänen Pitkänen is the director of the Advanced Fuels business in St1 Renewable Energy. The business consists of waste to ethanol production plants, developing new business and R&D in waste to ethanol bio refineries.
	Jan Deska Deska is a professor in Aalto School of Chemical Engineering. His research expertise combines various fields of organic chemistry development including transition metal catalysis, enzymatic and biotechnology.
	María Jose Cocero Alonso Cocero is one of the more recognizable names in the field of biomass fractionation in sub/supercritical water systems. She leads the high-pressure research group at the University of Valladolid in Spain
	Christoph Pfeifer Pfeifer is the head of the Institute for Chemical and Energy Engineering at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Austria. His current research focus is the development of the Hydrothermal Carbonization process.
	Lennart Vamling Vamling is a professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. His research team operates one of the few continuous hydrothermal liquefaction systems available globally.
	Dominique Lachenal Lachenal is a research team leader at Grenoble Institute of Technology in France. His extensive expertise includes wood pulping technologies and is the current co-ordinate for the pulp and paper division in the International Union of Forest Research Organizations.