Domain Committee "Forests, their Products and Services (fps)"

I. Management Report prepared by the COST Office/Grant Holder
I.A. COST Action Fact Sheet

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  COST Action FP0901, Analytical Techniques for Biorefineries
  
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  Domain Forests, their Products and Services (FPS)
  

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  Action details:
  

CSO Approval: 26/5/2009	End date: 14/10/2013
Entry into force: 15/10/2009	Extension: -

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  Objectives
  

Trees, annual and perennial plants, recycled fibres, and lignocellulosic side streams from forest and agroindustry are renewable resources for the development of natural materials, biochemicals, and bioenergy. The chemical complexity of plant materials, the feed material of Biorefineries, renders the analyses of the feed constituents, processes, and valorised products challenging. The main objective of the Action is to develop new and evaluate existing analytical methods related to forest-based and agroindustrial Biorefineries. Thus, the Action covers the analytical methods for the Biorefinery feed material and for processed biochemicals, biomaterials, and process residues. Especially analytical pretreatments will be evaluated. Critical steps are the representativeness of the sampling and samples, the extraction, fractionation, and sample storage methods applied. New methods will be applied and evaluated for their relevance. Other emphasised areas will be development of analytical on-line applications, hyphenated techniques, and applying statistical multicomponent analyses to sort out the relevant data from the main data stream. The European forest-based, bioenergy-based and agroindustrial industries will benefit from the Action in receiving relevant information on their developments of sustainable and environmentally benign solutions for novel utilisation of renewable resources. The development of analytical tools will lead to cost effective and sustainable processes and products.

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  Parties: list of countries and date of acceptance
  

Austria (11/07/2009)	Latvia (11/07/2009)	Turkey (25/11/2009)
Belgium (31/07/2009)	Netherlands (08/09/2009)	United Kingdom (11/07/2009)
Czech Rep. (20/08/2010)	Norway (15/09/2009)
Denmark (20/01/2010)	Poland (03/12/2009)
Estonia (21/10/2010)	Portugal (07/01/2010)
Finland (10/09/2009)	Romania (31/07/2009)
France (04/08/2009)	Serbia (30/09/2009)
Germany (11/07/2009)	Slovakia (31/07/2009)
Greece (11/07/2009)	Slovenia (31/07/2009)
Hungary (31/07/2009)	Spain (11/07/2009)
Ireland (16/03/2010)	Sweden (16/10/2009)
Italy (11/07/2009)	Switzerland (31/07/2009)

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  Intentions to accept: Bulgaria
  

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  Other participants:
  Scion, New Zealand
  

North Carolina State University, United States

Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil

CSIR Forestry and Forest Products Research Centre, South Africa (pending DC decision)

Chair: Prof. Stefan Willför, Åbo Akademi University, Porthansgatan 3, FI-20500, Åbo, Finland, mobile phone [phone], [e-mail] or [e-mail]	DC Rapporteur: Dr. Klaus Niemelä, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, PO Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland, phone [phone], [e-mail]