Enhancing International Collaboration for Tailor-Made Fuels From Biomass

The Excellence Cluster "Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass" or TMBF is organizing a conference for the first time from June 18 to 20, 2013, in Aachen. It will cover all topics surrounding the synthesis, production, and combustion of modern biofuels and is targeted towards an interdisciplinary audience from science and industry. The 40 presentations include a special evening presentation by Paul Anastas from Yale University, founding member of so called Green Chemistry. Other presenters include Charles Westbrook, an internationally recognized expert in combustion kinetics, and Tom Welton, professor of sustainable chemistry at Imperial College London.

Since the start of the first funding phase of the Federal and State Excellence Initiative to fund science and research at German universities, TMBF has been working on the development of a comprehensive process for manufacturing optimize biofuels – without competing with food production. Since then, an international workshop has taken place, at which the scientists from the 21 natural science and engineering institutes involved in the cluster have presented their interdisciplinary work. The international conference expands this collaboration to include presenters from around the world. "We are particularly proud of the many renowned presenters who have accepted our invitation," says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Pischinger, speaker of the Excellence cluster.