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FOOD WASTE TO BE CO-DIGESTED INTO BIOGAS IN KOREAN UNDERGROUND WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT

http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/2015/04/food-waste-to-be-co-digested-into-biogas-in-korean-underground-wastewater-treatment-plant.html?cmpid=EnlWMW_WeeklyMay12015

A new underground wastewater treatment plant serving 700,000 people in the municipality of Anyang, South Korea will use thermal hydrolysis technology (THP) to co-digest organic waste.

A new underground wastewater treatment plant serving 700,000 people in the municipality of Anyang, South Korea will use thermal hydrolysis technology (THP) to co-digest organic waste.

South Korean engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor Posco E&C awarded Norwegian firm, Cambi, a contract to supply its B12 THP process plant for the Anyang Sewage Treatment and co-digestion project.

The CambiTHP system will co-digest about 27,000 dry tons of organic waste per year, of which 65% is sewage sludge and the remaining 35% food waste.

Biogas produced from the co-digestion plant will be turned into electricity and as heat for the CambiTHP TM and digestion processes.

Remaining high dry solids dewatered product after digestion will be dried and blended with millet grass to produce a biomass fuel for co-firing in existing power plants.

Mr. Lim, site manager of Posco E&C Anyang Bagdal, said he expects a “substantial sludge reduction and increased biogas production from the installation of CambiTHP technology”.

Atila Mellilo, chief executive of Cambi, said: “In addition to operational and environmental benefits, the fact that the plant is located underground allows the Municipality of Anyang to benefit from a small footprint and substantial savings in capital expenditures associated with the construction of digesters.”

The contract represents a breakthrough into South Korea for Cambi, following contracts signed in China and an announcement this week for the Jurong water reclamation plant in Singapore.

Boeing aims to quit fossil fuel habit with tobacco-based jet fuel

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/boeing-aims-quit-fossil-fuel-habit-tobacco-based-jet-fuel

The scientific consensus around smoking being bad for your health is famously as solid as that which demonstrates how human activity is contributing to climate change. Now Boeing and partner South African Airways (SAA) may have found a way to tackle both problems by producing renewable jet fuel from a special type of tobacco plant.

The two companies have teamed up for a pilot project that has seen about 120 acres (50 hectares) in Limpopo province planted with Solaris, a nicotine-free, energy-rich tobacco plant. Oil from the plant’s seeds will be converted into jet fuel that Boeing says can reduce carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent.

In the next few years, SAA will conduct a test flight using the fuel, taking the next step on its drive to be “the world’s most environmentally sustainable airline.” In doing so, it will follow in the footsteps of a range of carriers, including BA, Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic and most recently China’s Hainan Airlines, in experimenting with greener fuels. In fact, more than 1,600 passenger flights using sustainable aviation biofuel have been completed since the fuel was approved for commercial use in 2011.

Aviation industry embraces biofuels
Two years later, the industry committed to carbon neutral growth from 2020 (PDF), but is still struggling to work out exactly how to achieve that goal.

Darrin Morgan, director of Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ sustainable biofuel strategy, said airlines increasingly are turning to biofuels to reduce their emissions as the industry lacks other realistic options.

“Ground transport is electrifying as we speak. Power generation — they have many options to go towards renewables and decarbonize,” he told BusinessGreen. “Aviation doesn’t. We’re going to have to have liquid hydrocarbons for a very long time.”

The challenge for the industry is that the oil majors who supply them have made limited progress in delivering the lower-carbon fuels the sector craves. “Aviation uses only about 6 or 7 percent of total oil barrel use, so most of the oil companies view aviation as a very small player and it’s hard for them to justify the extra effort to supply our needs,” Morgan explained. “So part of why we realized we had to be so active in shaping the fuel landscape for ourselves is because we don’t have other options to diversify.”

Biofuels in South Africa

Biofuels plantations have been blamed for deforestation and other land-use change. Campaigners have warned these problems will get worse if airlines start demanding large quantities of alternative fuels.

Morgan suggests that in South Africa, at least, this should not be a problem. “About 14 percent of the arable land in South Africa is under-utilized or unutilized,” he said. “If just a small percentage of that 14 percent were used for Solaris or other similar feedstocks, you would provide enough fuel for all of SAA’s needs. It’s not displacing essential food crops [and] it’s a drop in the bucket in terms of total land footprint to produce quite a bit of what is needed.”

If Solaris reaches a critical mass in South Africa, Morgan can see the potential for investing in refineries in the country, churning out not just jet fuel, but also road transport fuel and renewable chemicals. This could revolutionize a country that as Morgan puts it, “failed to win the oil lottery” and, like many others in the region, relies on expensive imports of already refined petroleum.

Solaris is still in its early stages, so we will have to wait to get a picture of its true potential among the huge range of alternate fuels that will be needed to successfully decarbonize an aviation industry responsible for around 3 percent of global emissions.

Biofuels around the globe

Boeing is looking at a number of other options, including fuel from plants grown in the desert using saltwater, and it is optimistic that a range of bio-kerosenes promising to be both cleaner than standard fuels and with a greater energy density — essentially offering more power for less weight, a crucial property for aviation — soon will be certified for aviation use.

Currently, these fuels are sold for transport by Finland’s Neste Oil and Italian company ENI, but Morgan is convinced of the potential for aviation — he said the three refineries already open in Italy, Rotterdam and near Helsinki currently produce around 4 billion liters of bio-kerosene.

“Now on the global scale, that’s not very much, but for aviation that’s almost 2 percent of our fuels use with just these initial, first-of-their-kind renewable fuel plants,” he added.

The age of greener aviation may not have taken off just yet, but there are encouraging signs it is edging towards the runway.

Tobacco plants may boost biofuel and biorefining industries

http://phys.org/news/2015-04-tobacco-boost-biofuel-biorefining-industries.html

Researchers will genetically modify tobacco plants to produce enzymes that can break down biomass from forest raw materials. This may lead to a more effective, economic and sustainable production of biofuels.

Biorefining industries produce fuel, power, heat, and various chemicals. The products are made from biomass, such as food waste and forest-based materials. Today the forest-based biorefining industries face huge challenges.

The cell walls of wood biomass are very hard to break down and large quantities of enzymes are required in the industrial process. A Norwegian based research project now aims to develop low cost production of industrial enzymes using tobacco plants as a “green factory”. Such enzymes may be used in the production of second generation biofuels, and to produce biochemicals that can replace various oil-based products. Second generation biofuels are made from non-food biomass.

It is cheap to produce industrial enzymes in plants

The first step to produce forest-based biofuels is to break down the biomass to sugar. To do this the industry needs a cocktail of enzymes. Currently the production cost of enzymes is high, which is a major impediment for a sustainable and cost effective biorefinery. This challenge is especially important for the Norwegian forest industry.

Usually chemical enzymes are produced in a fermenter-based system, which is a common industrial system to produce for instance food and alcohol. It is very expensive to build up a fermentation system. It has to be sterile, and it needs a lot of energy and water to control pressure and temperature. The Bioboost project will decrease the carbon footprint of biorefining by using genetically engineered tobacco, a non-food and non-feed crop, as a green enzyme factory. The goal is to replace energy demanding fermenter-based systems.

“Plants can use CO2 and energy from the sun for free. The whole production process of making the enzymes in plants is cheap, and environmentally friendly,” explains Dr. Jihong Liu Clarke from Bioforsk – The Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research. She is the leader of the Bioboost research project.

The tobacco plant is according to Liu Clarke ideal for this purpose, because it has a good biomass in the sense of many, and big, leaves. It also grows quickly, and can be harvested three or four times a year.

“The biotechnology used to recover enzymes is well known, and the tobacco plant is a good candidate because it has a lot of biomass that is easy to manipulate,” says Liu Clarke.

“Solutions that can contribute to lower the production costs of enzymes are urgently needed. I hope that this research project can contribute to at least one of the many solutions,” says Liu Clarke. The project is financed by the Research Council of Norway, and the project period is four years.

Enzymes are the most expensive production cost

In the first phase of the project researchers from Bioforsk, NFLI (Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute), and NMBU (Norwegian University of Life Sciences) will search for good enzyme candidates.

“Our project aims to produce key cell wall degrading enzymes in tobacco at low cost, in addition to identifying and characterizing valuable new enzymes during the project period,” says Liu Clarke.

“We aim to carry out a pilot large-scale production of our selected enzymes in China, and our industrial partner Borregaard will test these enzymes once they are ready,” says Liu Clarke. She emphasises that she is happy to lead a highly competent research team with both Norwegian and international partners.

1-tobaccoplant

Borregaard is a Norwegian company that produces advanced and environmentally friendly biochemicals, biomaterials and bioethanol that can replace oil-based products.

The company has developed its own process to convert biomass to chemicals and biofuels. A demonstration plant has been up and running for the last two and a half years.

“Enzymes are the single most expensive production cost in this process, except for the raw material itself,” says Technology Director in Borregaard, Guldbrand Rødsrud.

He explains that a few producers maintain a high price level for enzymes. Today Borregaard depends on buying enzymes from these producers.

“We intend to search for other options, and a more effective production process. If the research team fulfils its goals, it can be the beginning of a new and cheaper way to produce enzymes. It may give us the possibility to become more competitive to oil-based products,” says Rødsrud.

Tobacco plants and GMO is like a cell phone

The researchers will search for a gene to put into the tobacco plant that will make the plant produce many enzymes, which again will break down biomass effectively.

Liu Clarke explains that they add gene codes for proteins, and the proteins produce a change.

“The genes are only genetic information. The functions lies in the product. We add genes that manipulate the tobacco plant to create the products we want.”

She compares the tobacco plant with a cell phone.

2-tobaccoplant

“Many years ago, my cell phone was just a phone and its weight was almost half a kilo. Today the phone has everything, like a camera, internet and a speech recorder. However, the core is still a phone. It is the same thing with the plants. The core is there, and the more we get to know the plants the better we get to know the technology.”

No major ethical dilemmas

Liu Clarke does not see any major ethical dilemmas regarding the application of GM (genetically modification) technology on tobacco plants.

“First of all, we do not eat the tobacco plant, and it does not grow naturally in Norway because the climate is too cold. The plants are cultivated in a confined greenhouse, with the permission of the Norwegian Directorate of Health. ”

“Many people are sceptical to GMOs, but in this case, we use tobacco plants with the help of biotechnology to produce valuable enzymes for industrial biorefinery. I believe there are mainly benefits, because we produce cheap enzymes and use the tobacco plant in a health-friendly way,” says Liu Clarke.

3-tobaccoplant

Biofuels and lack of political will

The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) have announced ambitious goals towards decarbonizing their energy systems by 2050. This means biofuels are expected to account for at least 50% of total energy use in transport by 2050. In Norway, a number of national strategies and policies have been launched to promote the production and use of energy from renewable sources, while at the same time revitalizing the forest sector.

Borregaard produces twenty million litres of ethanol every year, of which about five millions are used to produce biofuels. Still, very little of Borregaard’s produced biofuels are sold in Norway. Rødsrud explains that the general market for biofuels in Europe is at a standstill due to a lack of consistent and predictable policies.

4-tobaccoplant

“In Norway, a political decision is the only missing link to create a market. The production of second generation biofuels is already running in Sarpsborg. There is a critical need for long-term and predictable policies,” says Rødsrud.

He points out Switzerland as a successful example of a created biofuel market. The country is one of Borregaard’s major customers because it has implemented a law compulsorily blending second generation biofuels into fossil fuels.

Anaerobic Digestion deployment in the United Kingdom

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The true costs of our electricity

Way Kuo says our calculation of the least costly way to generate electricity will be skewed, as long as the environmental harm of the use of fossil fuels is not properly accounted for

Smog is a major problem facing Beijing and many other places on earth today. It is also a reminder that environmental pollution has reached a critical point in human history.

The recent documentary Under the Dome, an in-depth report on environmental problems in China by Chai Jing , has triggered a heated debate over the credibility of its sources. But the debate has sidestepped one of the critical issues facing humanity: greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on the environment and the sustainability of earth.

Energy is a necessity in modern life. Our dependence on electricity has left noticeable carbon footprints on nature. Of the broad spectrum of energies, fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil) are still the major energy sources for electricity generation, accounting for 67 per cent of world electricity production as of 2012, in spite of pledges by governments around the world to increase the use of renewable green energies. The rest comes from cleaner energies like hydroelectric (17 per cent) and nuclear (11 per cent).

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, approximately 37 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions are from electricity production, especially from burning coal. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is building up and that build-up is accelerating as electricity demand is expected to increase by 43 per cent over the next 20 years.

Nuclear energy, in comparison, ranks among the lowest of any electricity generation methods in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and is comparable, on a life cycle basis, to wind, hydropower and biomass energy. It emits one-fifteenth and one-thirtieth as much greenhouse gas as natural gas and coal respectively.

And yet, nuclear energy has been a controversial topic ever since its adoption for commercial use. There are as many opinions about this problem as there are experts. While it is praised as one of the possible solutions to the energy shortage, it is condemned by others as “an unbearable inheritance” for future generations. The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011 brought the safety concerns sharply into the public eye again.

People are haunted by the fear of nuclear disasters when, in reality, nuclear energy has a strong safety record. Nuclear power plants achieve a high degree of safety by using what is called the “defence-in-depth” approach with multiple physical barriers built into their operation. These physical barriers prevent operational disturbances or human failures and errors, which have been found to be the cause of 80 to 90 per cent of mishaps. Even the Fukushima nuclear accident, triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake and catastrophic 14-metre-high tsunami, has been defined as “a profoundly man-made disaster”.

According to a report published in the March 2013 issue of Environment Science & Technology by scientists from Nasa, nuclear power has made greater contributions to the welfare of humankind than all other energies in use. The report pointed out that, even taking into account the serious consequences of the three biggest nuclear disasters in history, the benefits derived from the use of nuclear power between 1971 and 2009 have helped to prevent 1.8 million deaths resulting from causes related to the use of fossil fuels, especially coal.

Also, according to a December 2013 Lancet article by Chen Zhu, China’s former minister of health, and his colleagues, air pollution causes 350,000 to 500,000 premature deaths on the mainland each year. The main polluters are industry, coal and vehicles. This is believed to be a conservative estimate, and provides further evidence that carbon dioxide reduction is a necessity.

At present, nuclear power plays a significant part in a spectrum of energies in producing base-load power (a dependable source that can meet minimum demand) and this will continue for the foreseeable future. The other energy sources used for base-load power are fossil fuels.

In the past, increased use of nuclear energy to replace fossil fuels has contributed to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, it will be devastating to continue the use of fossil fuels for base-load power instead of cleaner energies.

People demand nuclear safety, and yet tend to turn a blind eye to the adverse environmental impact of fossil fuels and the millions of deaths caused by coal mining. With modern technology and increases in oil prices, non-traditional fossil fuels such as oil sands in Canada, pre-salt deposits in Brazil and shale oil in the US have been discovered in abundance since the beginning of this century. Yet the development of this new generation of fossil fuels will do nothing to reduce water and air pollution but in fact will create more severe pollution than traditional oil because of the extraction methods.

There is no free electricity. Given that different energies involve different levels of risk and environmental pollution, we should adopt a rational and scientific approach to policymaking. The cost of using electricity must take into account the economy, the costs of electricity generation, transmission and transformation, the sustainable well-being of the environment, safety, reliability, and other social and psychological factors.

Consumers could choose what combination of various sources of electricity they are willing to accept and then be charged in accordance with the declared percentage, the amount of the electricity consumed, the production cost and the cost of the risk.

We cannot afford to continue to overlook the phenomenon of global warming. The true cost of electricity should be shared by everyone.

Professor Way Kuo is president of City University of Hong Kong and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. This article is based on a recent talk delivered by the author at Peking University

Source URL (modified on Apr 1st 2015, 4:58pm): http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1753558/true-costs-our-electricity

Municipal Solid Waste and urban residues

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/03/31/feedstocks-in-focus-for-april-1-municipal-solid-waste-and-urban-residues/

Feedstocks in Focus for April 1: Municipal Solid Waste and urban residues

Also known as “Urban waste”, it’s nasty, here, inevitable and aggregated. The feedstocks are available at fixed, affordable prices and in long-term supply contracts from credit-worthy entities. Everyone loves the idea. So, when will we have it?

The Advanced Bioeconomy Feedstocks Conference, in New Orleans this June 9-10, 2015, organized by The Digest, will have a full session-length program on municpal solid waste and urban residues.

Where are some of the projects that might be advanced in the future??

In Maine, the University of Maine has been hired by a consortium of 187 towns and their MSW streams to evaluate whether Fiberight’s technology could be a good option for the state’s waste. The company is producing its Trashanol at a facility in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Currently the consortium’s waste is processed by a waste-to-energy plant in Orrington it partially owns but will not likely be profitable after 2018 when its current power offtake agreement expires.

In Thailand, Phuket’s Provincial Administration Organization is seeking $22.6 million to build a waste-to-biofuel facility that would use the entire island’s MSW as feedstock. Funding for the project will be sought from the national Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

In Canada, Iris Solutions, Plenary Harvest Surrey and Urbaser S.A. have been shortlisted from an original group of 11 companies to invest in, build and operate the city of Surrey’s $60 million residential kitchen and yard waste into renewable fuel project. The fuel is destined to power the city’s garbage collection vehicles.

In Texas, former Terrabon CTO Cesar Granda told the Digest: “We are in the early stages of a new company, Earth Energy Renewables, which bought out all the Terrabon assets, data and IP from the bankruptcy and kept a few of the key employers in payroll . Our focus is to ramp up with chemicals first producing acids and ketones, before we move on to fuels again, which we are still enthusiastic about. We are in fund raising mode at the moment, but research and progress is continuing at the lab and pilot plant level.” As of last year, EER had exceeded its goal of producing 70 gallons of renewable gasoline per ton of MSW using its patented acid fermentation technology.

Waste to Fuels Monsters. Today, Solena and INEOS Bio.

INEOS Bio

INEOS Bio announced that its Indian River BioEnergy Center at Vero Beach is now producing cellulosic ethanol at commercial scale — and registered its first RINs from that production earlier this year.

This is the first commercial-scale production in the world using INEOS Bio’s breakthrough gasification and fermentation technology for conversion of biomass waste into bioethanol and renewable power.

The Center cost more than $130 million and created more than 400 direct construction, engineering and manufacturing jobs during its development. The project sourced more than 90% of the equipment from U.S. manufacturers, creating or retaining jobs in more than 10 states. The Center has 65 full- time employees and provides $4 million annually in payroll to the local community.

As of last September, the company updated its progress as follows:

“INEOS Bio’s Vero Beach facility has recently completed a major turn-around that included upgrades to the technology as well as completion of annual safety inspections. We are now bringing the facility back on-line,” said Nigel Falcon, Site Director. “In addition we will soon finish installation of equipment that will be used to remove impurities from one of our process streams that have been negatively impacting operations. This equipment will be commissioned and brought online over the remainder of the year.”

We’ve spent the last year investigating and testing options for improving the operation of the facility, both at the Center as well as at our pilot facility in Fayetteville Arkansas. We decided on the optimum path forward and are in the final stages of implementing the required changes,” Falcon continued. “Over the next six months, we will focus on implementing these upgrades at the Center as we look to continue to build its on-stream performance and reliability.”

Concluded Falcon, “We fully expected to encounter new challenges as we scaled up this exciting new technology. We’ve taken the time to develop solutions that will enable reliable production of high quality bioethanol. The efforts moving forward will continue to focus on safe operations, optimizing the technology, and de-bottlenecking the plant to achieve full production capacity.”

Solena Fuels

Solena’s Integrated Biomass-Gas to Liquid “IBGTL” solution is based on a Fischer-Tropsch platform coupled with Solena’s proprietary high temperature plasma gasification technology to produce sustainable fuels from low carbon-bearing organic waste. Solena has developed best-of-breed relationships with world-leading technology and engineering companies to implement its IBGTL solution worldwide. As it addresses the substantial and rapidly growing demand for sustainable fuels at market prices for petroleum based fuels, Solena is considered a highly attractive solution and market leader in the sustainable synthetic fuels industry.

A unique characteristic of the IBGTL process is that it can handle a wide variety of feedstock and thus is completely “fuel flexible”. Unlike standard gasification technologies, Solena’s IBGTL process utilizes a powerful and independent heat source – plasma torches – and can thus accommodate varying heterogeneous feedstock. The company has several projects in development in India (highlighted above), and with Lufthansa, Qantas and Turkish Airlines.

The British Airways project. In 2010, British Airways announced its GreenSky London project — and in November 2012 the airline announced its binding offtake and investment commitment to GreenSky London. GreenSky London will transform tonnes of municipal waste – normally sent to landfills – into Bio-SPK, Green FT Diesel and Green FT Naphtha.

The chosen location for this innovative project is the Thames Enterprise Park, part of the site of the former Coryton oil refinery in Thurrock, Essex. The site has excellent transport links and existing fuel storage facilities. One thousand construction workers will be hired to build the facility which is due to be completed in 2017, creating up to 150 permanent jobs.

This ground-breaking fuel project is set to revolutionise the production of sustainable aviation fuel. Approximately 575,000 tonnes of post-recycled waste, normally destined for landfill or incineration, will instead be converted into 120,000 tonnes of clean burning liquid fuels using Solena’s innovative integrated technology. British Airways has made a long-term commitment to purchase all 50,000 tonnes per annum of the jet fuel produced at market competitive rates.

In November 2013, Solena Fuels is in discussions with city authorities in Chennai to use the city’s 5,000 tons of MSW per day to produce 120 million liters of aviation biofuel and 45 million liters of diesel per year. The facility would cost $450 million to build with an eight year ROI. Solena’s technology is syngas-based using plasma reactors to treat the feedstock.

Researchers in Belgium turn sawdust into gasoline

December 01, 2014

Researchers in Belgium have found a way of turning sawdust into building blocks for gasoline.

A new chemical process developed at KU Leuven’s Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis converts the cellulose in sawdust into hydrocarbon chains. These hydrocarbons can be used as an additive in gasoline, or as a component in plastics, the university said.

“Essentially, the method allows us to make a ‘petrochemical’ product using biomass — thus bridging the worlds of bio-economics and petro chemistry,” commented Dr. Bert Lagrain, co-author of the research report.

Cellulose is present in all non-edible plant parts of wood, straw, grass, cotton and old paper. A key advantage of cellulose is that it is essentially plant waste and does not compete with food crops in the way that crops grown for bioethanol do.

“At the molecular level, cellulose contains strong carbon chains. We sought to conserve these chains, but drop the oxygen bonded to them, which is undesirable in high-grade gasoline. Our researcher Beau Op de Beeck developed a new method to derive these hydrocarbon chains from cellulose,” explained Professor Bert Sels.

“With the right temperature and pressure, it takes about half a day to convert the cellulose in the wood shavings into saturated hydrocarbon chains, or alkanes,” said Dr. Lagrain.

The result is an intermediary product that requires one last simple step to become fully-distilled gasoline, Prof. Sels added.

As well as its potential use as an eco-friendly additive that can replace a portion of traditionally-refined gasoline, the green hydrocarbons could be used in the production of ethylene, propylene and benzene — the building blocks for products such as plastic, rubber, insulation foam, nylon and coatings.

The researchers currently have a patent pending for this new type of bio-refining.

Details of their discovery have been published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science.

http://www.processingmagazine.com/articles/128283-researchers-in-belgium-turn-sawdust-into-gasoline

Solena Fuels: Waste to Jet & Diesel Fuel

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Waste-Derived Biogas: Global Markets for Anaerobic Digestion Equipment

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Anaerobic Digestate

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