PULP2VALUE project – A full biorefinery model for sugar beet pulp

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The EU is the world’s leading producer of sugar from beet with around 50% of the total. Most production is processed into crystallised or liquid sugar for food applications. Only 2% of total sugar production is used in non-food applications (for instance, production of bioethanol in conventional sugar biorefineries). The sugar sector needs to develop new markets to grow.

One of the opportunities is boosting the use of the sugar as a basis for fermentation. This will lead to simplified processes with lower energy needs and use of all the sugar content for value-added end products. A good example is the industrial project for the plant of PHAs biopolymer that Cristal Union (leading sugar beet producer in France) and Bio-on will build in France (see press release).

But, this is not the only way. During the processing of the beets, a major residual stream called sugar beet pulp is generated after extracting the sugar. In Europe, it accounts for approximate 13 million tons per year and it is mainly used for animal feed. Therefore, new solutions to valorize this waste could represent a significant opportunity to open new value chains and markets. And, that is the overall objective of the project PULP2VALUE. In other words, the approach of this project intends to demonstrate a biorefinery system to refine sugar beet pulp and isolate high value components for detergents, personal care, coatings, composites and other applications.

PULP2VALUE (Processing Underutilised Low value sugarbeet Pulp into VALUE added products) is one of the two European demonstration projects that are being funded by the European Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking (BBI JU call 2014, see previous post about the results of this call). It has a total budget of €11.5 million with €6.6 million coming from the BBI JU. The consortium is being managed by the agro-industrial cooperative Royal Cosun (The Netherlands) and comprises six partners more from four countries: The Netherlands (Food and Biobased Research part of Wageningen UR and Division of Human Nutrition Wageningen University), Belgium (Orineo bvba and Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant), United Kingdom (Refresco Gerber UK Limited) and Germany (Nova-Institut fur Politische und Okologische Innovation GmbH).

In order to increase the value of sugar beet pulp, PULP2VALUE will develop multiple extraction techniques to isolate more valuable products from this large fraction. Roughly, 65% of the dry matter mass can be isolated as high value products being: microcellulose fibers (MCF) (33%), arabinose (16%) and galacturonic acid (16%). By demonstrating an integrated and cost-effective cascading biorefinery system to refine sugar beet pulp, PULP2VALUE aims to significantly increase (20-50 times) the value of the sugar beet pulp by applications for approximately 65% of its mass in high value markets.

Figure 1. PULP2VALUE concept (extracted from the leaflet available on the web page of the project)

For each of the components to be obtained, Royal Cosun has identified multiple product market combinations. Basic economic considerations point to the fact that the full potential of the MCF can only be fully exploited in case of developing a cascade biorefinery system producing also arabinose and galacturonic acid. PULP2VALUE explicitly builds on research that has already been carried out and aims to integrate and scale up these achievements. Royal Cosun has already developed a pilot facility in which the state-of-the-art units has been previously tested. Now, the ultimate goal is to set up a plant to demonstrate the concept.

Regarding to the future applications to be unfold during the project, it should be noticed that Royal Cosun and the Dutch chemicals giant AkzoNobel have recently formed a new partnership to develop novel products from cellulose side streams resulting from sugar beet processing (see press release).

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