This course aims at bringing the student in a position to better understand and critically relate to research articles within the field of biorefinery and sustainability. The objective is achieved by thorough analysis and discussion of important scientific papers improving the student’s ability to communicate and discuss scientific standpoints. En studerende, der fuldt ud har opfyldt kursets mål, vil kunne:

• Critically relate to research results within the field.
• Review the methods and results in a scientific publication within the field of biorefinery and sustainability.
• Perform a well-structured and clear presentation of an issue or method within the field of biorefinery and sustainability.
• Communicate and discuss personal scientific standpoints in a constructive way.
• Present research results in English.
• Critically evaluate the content and structure of a scientific paper according to points considered when reviewing a paper for a journal.
• Define and describe the latest trends in sustainability assessment related to biorefinery.
• Define contemporary challenges in sustainability assessment related to biorefinery.

The world is facing huge challenges due to increasing global population and limiting resources (e.g. fossil oil) at the same time as the ecosystems have to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Emerging technologies of biorefining propose an alternative to the fossil based society. How can we assure that the biorefinery technologies contribute to a sustainable development? The course will focus on presentations by the students of scientific papers from recognized journals dealing with sustainability assessment of different technologies related to biorefinery. Papers are selected by the student doing the presentation for the actual course day in collaboration with the responsible teacher. For each course day, all students are expected to have read the selected paper.

The student presentation (visual) includes the goal, results and conclusions of the selected paper as well as a critical review of methods, results and conclusions. Following the presentation, the results and their implications for the research of all participants are discussed. At latest two weeks after the presentation, the student will send the presentation slides and the report, a learning journal and critical evaluation with a given structure provided to participants. The presenting student spends about 20 hours in total for the seminar and report whereas other participant spend 5 hours in total for each seminar. 05. december, 2016