Prof Chun-Han Ko

School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University, Taiwan

Potentials and Opportunities of Bioenergy Production from Subtropical Biomass in Taiwan

Promoting biofuel to replace fossil fuels and alternative utilization schemes to replace conventional measures of biomass have been considered a priority to mitigate CO2 emissions. Due to favorable climate and soil fertilities, the potential and opportunities for bioenergy supply in a place like Taiwan are estimated. Rich subtropical biodiversity in Taiwan presents abundant options of feedstock for bioenergy production. Examples of potential bioethanol production from Taiwanese chenopods, bamboos, napier grass, hardwood resources are analyzed. Opportunities of bioenergy production from biomass recovered from phytoremediation from heavy metal contaminated sites are also investigated. Finally, potential of bioenergy production from biomass wastes of rice paddies and forest sectors in Taiwan are also estimated. Results from the above studies could be employed to estimate the biomass and bioenergy production potentials of developing countries locating in subtropical regions around the world.

CV: Chun-Han Ko is a professor from School of Forestry and Resource Conservation, National Taiwan University (NTU). He has joint NTU since 2001. He got his Ph.D. of Civil and Environmental Engineering from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA in 1999. His M.S. degree is of Paper Science and Engineering, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York (SUNY), USA in 1993. He served in Department of Water Quality Protection of Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in 2000-2001. He had served as Chair of School of Forestry and Resource Conservation of NTU in 2016-2018. He had also served as a member of several committees of Taiwan EPA. Dr. Ko’s interdisciplinary background facilitates his cross-field and integrated approach for research problems he faced. His current research interests are sustainable biomass conversion processes and development of novel biomaterial utilization schemes. He authored and co-authored over 70 peer reviewed, international scientific journal papers. Dr. Ko is also an avid participator of SDEWES and other international academic conferences.