The Overall Objective of SUPRABIO is research, development and demonstration of novel intensified unit operations that can be integrated into economic and sustainable biorefinery options for the production of second-generation biofuels, intermediates and high value products, together with assessment of the outcomes to inform and enable sustainable implementation.
In addition, the project consortium will pursue ten specific objectives:
1. Objective Related to Lignocelluloses
The aim in SUPRABIO is to utilise all the potential value in lignocelluloses feedstocks by separating these into lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses components and showing how each component may be worked up into value. Pre-treatment, hydrolysis and fermentation will be used to produce C5 and C6 sugars, ethanol and 2,3 butanediol. Either the ethanol or the 2,3 butanediol process will be demonstrated at industrial pilot scale.
2. Objective Related to Microalgae
Although microalgae are at present a very high cost biomass, there is the potential to avoid the use of agricultural land while harvesting light energy and adsorbing carbon dioxide. However, at present the energy of terrestrial algae production is poor and must be improved. At this very early stage of exploitation, SUPRABIO concentrates on establishing a potential industry in Northern Europe based on high value products (fish feed, human food supplements) but developing generic technologies for optimising production and fractionating products.
3. Objective Related to Platform Chemicals and Intermediates
The aim here is to develop bio routes from C5 and C6 sugars (derived from lignocelluloses) to high value chemicals that are in demand as intermediates.
The objectives include the microbial production of organic acids from C5 and C6 sugars derived from hydrolyzed biomass; enzymatic transformations of the simple chemicals obtained from biomass processing into added value functionalised molecules (e.g. enantiomerically pure chiral amines, alcohols, aldehdyes, carboxylic esters) that have value as intermediates for the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, agrichemicals, personal health care ingredients, flavour and fragrance components etc. In addition, pilot studies to assess design requirements of full scale industrial plants will be carried out.
4. Objective Related to Fine Chemicals
The aim here is to develop routes to high value fine chemicals (e.g. pharmaceutical intermediates, chiral molecules) based on selective bio catalytic processes that can be integrated into a biorefinery by using refinery streams (lipids, polyols). Immobilisation techniques will be used to improve the economics of separation.
5. Objective Related to Increased Value from Lignin
The aim is to achieve more value from the available lignin fraction of biomass. Although lignin based surfactants and other lignochemicals are better known, there are recent indications that certain lignin fragments may have very high value (antioxidants, nutraceuticals, cosmetics). Routes to these fractions will be developed and their characteristics screened for positive or negative health effects. There is also a limitation on the use of lignin in materials and consumer products imposed by its physical incompatibilities. The aim here is to investigate methods for applying nanolignin in colloidal form and to examine the potential of lignin itself to perform as an emulsifying agent enabling nanoemulsions.
6. Objective Related to Second Generation Biofuels
The aim is to convert as much as possible of the carbon and chemical energy available in biomass feedstocks into biofuels for transport. Value will be achieved by optimising the fuel quality as well as process efficiency. Process intensification and process integration will be used to achieve these aims at the same time as matching the scale of production to the feedstock streams anticipated in biorefineries. Although the catalytic processes are essentially known, our innovation is to develop new, highly compact and integrated reactor systems that will completely transform the efficiency and economics of the catalytic processing steps.
7. Objective Related to Thermochemical Routes
The best economics for the conversion of biomass to energy carriers by the thermochemical route may well be achieved only in very large-scale plants. However, the availability and logistics of biomass supply are then a problem. In SUPRABIO we consider two possible applications of the thermochemical route in situations where transport fuels are required from biorefinery operations. Firstly, residual value may be harvested from the residues of biorefinery unit operations by conversion to utility energy. Secondly, there may be viable opportunities to collect feedstock for a biorefinery from distributed producers of biomass in the form of pre-treated bio-oil, char or lignin residues. This may then be processed on into transport fuels by the syngas route. For this to be viable, the project will use high temperature, high pressure entrained flow gasification with integrated clean up and upgrading, and will develop feed systems for the liquids and solids within the project.
8. Objective Related to Nanomaterials
Plant material contains cellulosic fibres that can be defibrillated to produce nanofibres with high aspect ratio and very large surface area. These characteristics have valuable potential to improve properties in a range of different end uses. In water-based systems cellulosic nanofibres have strong rheologic functionality, which is desired in e.g. paints, and coatings where oil based synthetic rheology modifiers are applied. Interesting properties have been demonstrated also in low fat foods formulations, e.g. dressings and mayonnaise, where cellulosic nanofibres bring the right texture and mouth feel to simulate presence of fat in full fat products in a cost efficient way. Cellulosic nanofibres are foreseen to have great potential in numerous application areas, in many cases as a renewable high quality substitute for existing oil based products, which are in use today.
9. Objective Related to Biorefinery Optimisation and Management
To achieve optimum economic, social and environmental benefit, SUPRABIO has activities aimed at utilising all the biomass for most benefit, integrating processes for efficiency and managing the biorefinery utilities and entrained nutrients to best effect. Combining intensified conversion with novel reactor design and process integration is particularly important (see objectives, 2,3,4,6,7). In addition there are activities aimed at managing and utilising the waste streams within the refinery and analysing the marketplace for products in order to predict the best configurations for different economic, social or geographical scenarios.
Aqueous streams containing biomass are valuable resources available from municipalities, food processing and biorefinery unit operations. This presents an opportunity to harvest additional resources and deal with operational issues concerning sustainable water management, clean up and recycle within any biorefinery operation. Multiculture anaerobic fermentation can be directed towards aqueous acid salts that may be further processed to liquid hydrocarbons. Alternatively, such waste water might be used in algae culturing processed to feed the algae while simultaneously cleaning the water.
10. Objective Related to Sustainability
Alongside the developments within SUPRABIO aimed at developing technologies and platforms and integrating them into biorefinery operations, a major objective is to assess the sustainability along the entire value chain. This will be achieved by a series of tasks that separately assess the major parameters relevant to making an assessment of sustainability over the entire value chain. These assessments are life cycle and environmental (global) analysis, environmental (local) impact assessment (EIA) and strategic environmental assessment (SEA), process economics assessment, market analysis, social, political and legal assessment and SWOT analysis of biomass potentials and competition. The results of these individual tasks will then be integrated for each relevant operation or platform to draw conclusions of sustainability along the entire value chain.