Bio-Industrial Technology Division

Examples of current work include essential oil extraction, distillation, crops and lipid fractionation and separations. Pilot work includes fiber and crop material grinding, material extrusion, material and bio-composite forming. Four key areas for support are lipid utilization, crop utilization, fiber extraction and biomass methane digester demonstration.

One of the divisions goals is to have Alberta, recognized nationally, as a leader in conducting applied research applications in advanced industrial material ingredient development, biomass utilization and biodigestor technology adoption. The division is also focused on establishing the capability for Alberta industry to:

• Develop advanced materials and composite products incorporating refined agricultural fibers as well as improve functionality of existing synthetic fiber though new process engineering, extraction and refining of agricultural fiber sources.
• Establish a suite of both chemical and biological process capacity to refine, extract and fraction cereal and lipid based crops into fine chemical constituents and industrial ingredients for the manufacture of polymers, resins, cosmetics and fuels.
• Support the demonstration and analysis of potential feed stocks for the production of methane gas from current by-product streams in the food and forestry industries as well as provide optimization of chemical process engineering support to newly established biogas operations.