Our offices and laboratories will be closed from December 25th  to January 1st included.

 We wish you a Merry Christmas and all the very best for 2016!

The EU Interreg IVB project ‘Grow2Build’ enters its final stage. Around 50 participants from 6 European countries joined a final event in Namur, September 2^nd. Among them many SME’s, as well as representatives of research organizations, education and policy.
 
The Grow2Build partners hosted a visit to IsoHemp and ChanvrEco, two innovative producers of hemp and flax based building materials. Afterwards a selection of the results and the achievements of the Grow2build project were presented in Namur.
 
Topics discussed were improvement of fire behaviour of hempcrete blocks, results of a desk study on health and comfort issues related to the use of biobased building materials, bio-polyester as a matrix ... Read more

In Europe, nearly two billion tons of fresh food packaged under modified atmosphere were consumed in 2013, and the number keeps growing. Another big number related to packaged fresh foods is the amount of waste: about 40% of finished products are not consumed. Part of the wastage occurs in the supply chain (storage, transport and distribution), which means that the food being thrown away is still packaged! This shows that conventional modified atmosphere packaging is not always sufficient to guarantee the preservation of food.

Moreover, packaging thrown away along with food are usually oil-based, and can only be recovered through combustion. Therefore, food and packaging waste is both an economic and ... Read more

Saline plants use for chemicals and energy production
 
The SALICHEM projectstarted in the beginning of January and will last 2 years.
 
Halophytes are plants that grow in waters and soils of high salinity. In order to adapt themselves to this hostile environment, these plants had to synthetize specific secondary metabolites and had developed the ability to absorb salts.
 
Due to the global climate change, irrigation and deforesting, salinization of soils is becoming a more and more serious threat for agriculture. To prevent the loss of these lands, halophytes can be grown to decontaminate the soils by absorbing the salts. The biomass produced can be valorized in different sectors.
 
Here comes the SALICHEM ... Read more