Wageningen January 28, 2007 More countries join forces in battle to reduce CO2 emission

On Tuesday, Dec 19^th, 2006, the official document was signed in Brussels for extension of the ‘HYVOLUTION project’ in the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), Sustainable Energy Systems, with three new partners. With these partners from Italy, Russia and South Africa the total number has now increased to 22.

HYVOLUTION has started at Jan 1^st, 2006 with a participation of 19 companies, research institutes and universities from 11 countries. The consortium has now been enforced by an SME from Italy and two universities from Russia and South Africa, bringing in their own expertise in respectively biomass, membrane technology and bioreactors. The participation of the new partners is for the full duration of the project ending at Dec 31^st, 2010. Coordinator of this project is the Dutch research institute Agrotechnology & Food Innovations, part of Wageningen UR.

The Acronym HYVOLUTION stands for non-thermal production of pure hydrogen from biomass. The Integrated Project aims to develop a blue print for a cost effective production facility for hydrogen from biomass. By using biomass instead of fossil resources, CO₂ emission and the dependence on fossil resources will be reduced.

In this project hydrogen is produced from biomass in a two-step bioprocess. In the first step, thermophilic bacteria convert pretreated biomass into hydrogen gas and organic acids. In the second step, other bacteria produce extra hydrogen from the organic acids coming from the first fermentation. Dedicated gas upgrading and system integration are designed to enable economically feasible hydrogen production at a local or regional scale.