The food industry currently relies on chemicals, antibiotics or radiation to kill pathogenic bacteria. These methods are less than ideal, due to the negative consequences for e.g. consumer health.
The researchers added lytic enzymes to nanoparticles of food-safe silica to develop a nanocoating that can selectively kill targeted bacteria. Lytic enzymes work by cleaving the cell wall surrounding a bacterial cell. According to the Rensselaer team, nature “uses lytic enzymes to break out of bacterial cells, and the researchers worked for years to exploit the same lytic enzymes to break into bacteria such as MRSA and listeria.”

For the food industry, the new coating offers a welcome innovation, as no chemicals or antibiotics are involved. Moreover, the technology can easily be adapted to selectively target other harmful bacteria, using different lytic enzymes, without affecting other bacteria.

Want to know more?
Fighting Listeria and Other Food-Borne Illnesses With Nanobiotechnology
www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/listeria.aspx
www.rivm.nl

At this year’s “6th International Conference on Industrial Biotechnology and Bio-based Plastics & Composites”, which took place in Cologne, Germany, it became clear that biorefinery technology has advanced enormously during the past few years, both as regards efficiency and cost competitiveness. However, the latter is currently facing a new threat: the availability of cheap natural gas currently being produced by means of fracking. The consequences of this are as yet unclear.

What did become very clear was that biomass is a far more regionally- based feedstock than oil, with different types of biomass being used in different parts of the world to produce biobased products. And with an annual global production over 170 trillion tons of biomass, of which only a mere fraction is currently used, there is biomass aplenty to serve as feedstock for the chemical industry. More could be used by making a more intelligent use of the existing infrastructure - in other words, by integrating bioprocesses into existing chemical installations. “We can develop sidestreams in order to more fully utilize the available raw materials using the infrastructure we already have. The key is to replace oil with biomass,” said Dr. Thomas Hirth, director of Fraunhofer IGB. He pointed to the chemical industrial park in Leuna, Germany, where Fraunhofer IGB has opened a new “Centre for Chemical Biotechnological Processes” at which five different processing systems have been installed that can be either separately operated or, if need be, used as easily combined modules, to process biomass - in this case woody waste - into lignocellulose and sugars. These sugars are fermented into chemical precursors from which a variety of chemicals are produced using the existing plants at the chemical park.

Lignocellulosic biomass is viewed as an important new feedstock for second-generation biofuels and biobased chemicals. A large number of companies are currently researching economically feasible routes to produce sugars and ethanol from lignocellulose, including, e.g. the Swiss-based chemical company Clariant. This company built a pilot plant in 2012 for the production of 1,000 metric tons of ethanol from lignocellulose (primarily straw, hence no debate over using food crops for non-food applications) via Clariant ’s patented Sunliquid process. The process will be scaled up to an industrial level of 50,000 to 150,000 tons per year by licensing the technology to third parties, as Clariant itself has no interest in becoming an ethanol supplier. The Sunliquid process is highly efficient due to the use of proprietary enzymes that yield 50% more sugars than when using standard enzymes. Moreover, all enzymes are produced in-house. The sugars can serve as a platform for the production of green chemicals; the lignin component may be used to fuel the process. The process has 95% lower CO2 emission rate than conventional oil-based ethanol production technologies.

This was only one of the many initiatives in the biorefinery area talked about at the congress. This technology has developed at incredible speed over the past 3 three years. Even more important, however, at least according to the speakers at the congress, is that the biorefinery concept offers a systemic view of carbon dioxide.

When carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is used, for whatever purpose, carbon is being used that has been stored for millions of years. It cannot be ‘given back’ as it were, and thus disturbs the natural carbon cycle. Carbon derived from biomass has a much shorter cycle of between 1 and 10 years.
Taking the origin of the carbon being used into account means that we must start to analyze and calculate the carbon footprint of materials in a different way. This is something that is only starting to be realized, but which will strongly affect the way we look at bio-based materials in the future.

The new product is an injectable, two-component silicone paste that does not degrade in the body. Its application is simple and minimally invasive. People Creating Value developed the dedicated silicone gun used to perform the procedure. The new silicone gun is user-friendly and ergonomic to ensure easy and accurate adjustment and dosing.

Some 100 women in Poland have already successfully undergone the procedure and the first Dutch patients were also recently treated. Urologists are currently being trained to apply the new product. Urogyn was recently interviewed by Dutch television station Omroep Gelderland. To view the recording, click on this link.

Click here for more information about People Creating Value’s part in the project.

Outside these known areas, more and more plastic garbage is turning up elsewhere, as well - such as along our own coast here in the Netherlands. Next to the sheer polluting effect of the enormous quantities of plastics in the marine environment, the plastic garbage is proving to have lethal effects, as well. It is mistaken for food by marine animals that are unable to digest it and in many cases, ultimately die, and can even end up in our food chain. Boyan Slat, a student at Delft University of Technology, has come up with a possible solution to this problem.

After studying the amount of plastics drifting in the oceans, he started thinking of ways to clean up the plastic mess.  For his graduation project, he conceived of a concept for eliminating this plastic garbage from the oceans. His idea consists of a giant, ray-shaped anchored collection station equipped with floating arms - ‘booms’ - that serve as a funnel.

By making use of the surface ocean currents, the water will flow through the collection station. The plastic garbage will be filtered out and collected at the station, where this will be retrieved for recycling on land.  The recycled plastic yields the revenue needed to fund the installation.
Boyan Slat received the award for the best Technical Design 2012 from Delft for his thesis.

More information, see http://www.boyanslat.com/TEDx/

Until now, plastic memory cells were made from polyvinylidene fluoride(PVDF) combined with trifluoroethylene. Trifluoroethylene offers the ferroelectric properties that are needed to make data storage possible. This electric polarization is comparable to the poles of a magnet and is switchable by an externally applied electric field, allowing data to be stored.

Mengyuan Li, a PhD student at the University of Groningen has now successfully developed a neat PVDF with these properties. She showed that at high temperatures, this material could be made into a thin, smooth film. Moreover, she found that by applying a short electric pulse, the film became ferroelectric. PVDF is an inexpensive, easily processable material. In addition, the film preserves the stored data up to a temperature of some 170 degree C.

Nikki Kemper

The Exhale Fan eliminates all these problems. The motor generates vortex airflow up toward the fan. The discs on the fan create a 360o-laminar movement of the air around the room. The Exhale Fan creates a subtle and even airflow with as result an agreeable climate in the room.

Airflow technology has already brought us deep fryers, table fans and now, ceiling fans. More is certainly in store for the future.

In addition, the DPS is far more robust than its rivals, a hallmark of this company’s other sensor families as well.

Marlies Moltmaker

The selection procedure for the 50 innovations to be presented in “Good News from the Netherlands 2013” concluded recently, and we are extremely proud to announce that our entry was among the 50 best submissions chosen for publication!

And this is not the first time: in 2011, People Creating Value was featured with the +GF+ Multi/Joint 3000 plus. This year in “Good News from the Netherlands”, People Creating Value, together with Urogyn, is presenting an innovation entitled: Minimal invasive solution for incontinence.

Urogyn, a young and innovative company in Nijmegen develops medical products for urologic and gynecologic applications. Their newest product is a two-component silicone compound that will not degrade in the human body, which offers a simple and minimally invasive treatment for Stress Urinary Incontinence and a patient-friendly technique for sterilization in women.

More details about the project and the part played by People Creating Value in the design of this product will be made available when the book is published, later this spring. Keep an eye on our site for more “Good News from the Netherlands”!

A very warm welcome to Christiaan and Nikki, and we look forward to a productive and exciting next few months!