Chempolis and NRL to build advanced biorefinery in India

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Recent news about a cellulosic ethanol project are coming from India. The Finish Chempolis announced on 14th February the formation of a Joint Venture with Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) to build a world class biorefinery using formicobio™ technology in North East India (Assam). The project, representing an investment of around 110 M€, has already approved from NRL’s board.

The final formalization of the JV was preceded by several preparation stages including a first Partnership Agreement between Chempolis and NRL (October 15, 2014) and MoUs with neighboring states of Assam for the sustainable supply of the raw materials.

Table 1. Technical details of the project
Feedstocks
Bamboo growing in North-East India.
It may also use other locally available biomasses such as grasses, sugarcane bagasse and cereals straw.
It will consume annually 300,000 tons of cellulosic biomasses (dry basis).
Products
Cellulosic ethanol (48,900 MT/y), platform chemicals (acetic acid and furfural) and combustible residues (biocoal and lignin).
Technology
Formicobio™ is a technology for the production of cellulosic sugars and further ethanol. It has been specially developed for non-food raw materials (e.g. bamboo, bagasse, straws and other agricultural residues) and it is based on selective fractionation of biomass with fully recoverable biosolvent containing formic acid.
The technology enables co-production of platform chemicals, such as acetic acid and furfural. In addition, combustion of co-produced solid biofuel (biocoal) can generate all the energy needed in the biorefinery, with some surplus to be used in other applications.

Figure 1. Simplified flow process diagram of formicobioTM technology (extracted from “formicobio™ – The future is non-food cellulosic ethanol”)

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