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CIRAD has inaugurated its new Biomass & Energy Platform in Montpellier

25/06/2012 - Article

Michel Salas, CIRAD Regional Director for Languedoc-Roussillon, inaugurated the new Biomass & Energy Platform in Montpellier on Monday 25 June 2012, in the presence of Jacques Moret, Regional Commissioner for Research and Technology, and the whole of the scientific community concerned. The platform is the only one of its type in France and indeed in Europe, and is now in a position to extend its research, work with new industrialists, increase its PhD student reception capacity and establish new international partnerships.

The 600-m² CIRAD Biomass & Energy Platform, the only one of its type in France , is home to the main R&D pilots for biomass conversion into energy. Its specificity is that it combines all the biomass thermochemical conversion processes on a semi-industrial scale: pyrolysis, roasting, gasification, and an engine test bench for biofuel combustion. "This is a key factor in CIRAD's attractiveness to donors, industrialists and the authorities ", Michel Salas, CIRAD Regional Director for Languedoc-Roussillon, said in his speech.

The experiments done at the Biomass & Energy Platform address major issues in terms of ecology and development in southern countries . "This is research that generates innovations and technology of major industrial, technological, environmental and societal importance ", as Jacques Moret, Regional Commissioner for Research and Technology, put it. A third of the world's population does not have access to energy services, primarily in rural areas of developing countries, whereas biomass is a locally available resource, in the form of agricultural and forest products and waste. Such products can provide the energy required for the development of economic activities and thus help alleviate poverty. Biomass also offers an opportunity of producing sustainable energy by reducing countries' dependence on fossil fuels while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Given the significant growth in its scientific activities, the platform needed to be extended and restructured . "75% of the unit's work centres on its pilot equipment ", Michel Salas points out. "All the theses supervised by CIRAD in this field are completed there, and a major proportion of the PhD students sent by overseas partners are received there for training ." The platform can now receive industrial partners wanting to test the performance of their own technologies and develop applications for the biofuels produced by CIRAD for use in their own production processes.