28 ONTARIO FARMERS PRODUCEover eight million metric tonnes of corn every year, but as growers know, some of it unavoidably becomes infested with vomitoxin, also known as deoxynivalenol or DON. DON is a mycotoxin produced from Fusarium, a fungal pathogen that also attacks barley, oats, wheat, and rye in Ontario and beyond. Markets for products made from this corn would be welcome, but these products must first be developed. That’s happening as we speak in the lab of Dr. Franco Berruti at the University of Western Ontario. Berruti is a Chemical & Biochemical Engineering professor and director of the Institute for Chemicals and Fuels from Alternative Resources (ICFAR). Berruti is also the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass and Waste to Bioindustrial Resources. This position was created to develop innovative and practical solutions for transforming biomass and other organic materials using thermochemical technologies into value-added products that can be successfully commercialized. Grain Farmers of Ontario has supported this Research Chair position since it was created in 2019, along with several other agriculture groups, the city of London, and various technology companies focused on sustainable products and recycling. “Farm sustainability is a significant priority for Grain Farmers of Ontario and its members,” says Dana Dickerson, Grain Farmers of Ontario’s manager, market development. “We want to be supporting the development of new technologies that can be used to reduce waste and support value-added processing of part of the annual harvest into new end uses. We want to help build the bio-products industry, which has the potential to be an important market for our grains.” Dickerson notes that in 2018, as this project was being developed, Ontario dealt with a significant DON outbreak which limited the New markets for DON-infested corn INNOVATIVE RESEARCH UNDERWAY Treena Hein GRAIN FARMERS OF ONTARIO STAFF TOURED DR. BERUTTI'S LAB TO LEARN ABOUT THE RESEARCH. ability of grain farmers to market the corn crop for food and feed. Even ethanol marketing was impacted, as the process of producing ethanol intensifies vomitoxin levels in coproducts like dried distillers grains used for animal feed. NEW RESEARCH Berruti and his team have been making good progress. They’ve determined that it’s indeed possible to use pyrolysis to eliminate vomitoxin in corn and produce marketable bioproducts. Pyrolysis involves applying heat without oxygen, breaking organic molecules into a solid carbonized residue (called biochar), bio-oil (condensed from vapours), and gases. As described in a new paper published by Berruti and ICFAR colleagues Shokooh Karami, Sadegh Papari and Naomi Klinghoffer, they found that pyrolysis at temperatures between 450°C and 650°C destroyed DON from 5-7 parts per million in raw corn grain to nothing in the bio-char. “This is brand new research and very unique,” says Berruti. “The solid biochar residue can be marketed as an adsorbent for pollutants in water and other materials. It’s equal in performance to commercial activated charcoal, which is expensive and made from fossil fuels. Biochar can also be marketed as a soil amendment and for a broad variety of other applications. When we condensed the vapours into liquid, we get a ‘bio-oil’ as it’s known, containing mostly acetic acids and sugars.” Acetic acid and sugars such as levoglucosan were the two major valuable components in the bio-oil, but although they could be separated and commercialized, their low concentrations do not justify such postprocessing. However, Berruti says the bio-oil could be efficiently used as the carbon source for bacteria-producing biogas in anaerobic digestion processes, thus producing renewable energy. Alternatively, the vapours, consisting of a broad variety of hydrocarbons, could be directly combusted to generate renewable energy. Market Development
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