InSciTe’s crude lignin oil is taking steps towards commercialisation
Lignin valorization is a hot topic within the
biorefining sector. I guess it will be an increasingly common theme in my
posts. Earlier this month, the Blog reported about the agreement
between Rottneros and RenFuel to initiate deliveries of lignin to produce
Lignol (lignin oil). Today, I bring the story of the Lignin RICHES project
that also is working with lignin oil.
InSciTe and the Lignin RICHES
project
The Chemelot
Institute for Science & Technology (InSciTe) is a public-private partnership
founded in 2015 by Royal DSM,
Maastricht University and University Medical Center, Eindhoven University of Technology and the
Province of Limburg. It is an institute knowledge driven and society oriented
with the purpose of developing sustainable biomedical materials and producing
biobased building blocks. With its physical nucleus at Brightlands Chemelot
Campus, InSciTe enables entrepreneurship, expertise, experimentation and
education in an open innovation network.
Figure 1. InSciTe’s pilot plant at Brightlands
Chemelot Campus (extracted from the web page of the Brightlands Chemelot Campus).
It is multi-purpose facility for scaling up the production of biobased building
blocks.
InSciTe’s biobased program focuses on the production
of sustainable materials and processes for marketable products and services
that contribute to a circular economy. The Lignin RICHES project is part of that
biobased program and it has the ambitious goal to lay the basis of the world’s
first lignin biorefinery. The approach is transforming lignin into an
intermediary product that they called Lignin Crude Oil (LCO) via a thermo-catalytic
chemical process that was developed by the Eindhoven University of Technology. In
a follow up step this LCO is fractionated and further converted to valuable
products like phenol, resins and octane-boosting fuel additives.
The LCO itself is a marine fuel much more sustainable
and environmentally friendly than “bunker” fuels that are currently used. In
this project, the first steps are taken towards certification of LCO as marine
fuel in collaboration with a shipping company and a marine engine manufacturer.
Using LCO in such a way ensures a return on investment in a short time,
creating additional funding to further develop the products mentioned above.
A pilot plant and a spin-off
Work is still ongoing in the Lignin RICHES project to
fine-tune the LCO refining process to improve the efficiency and reduce the
costs. Before LCO is ready for market, further testing and production upscaling
will be carried out at InSciTe. A pilot plant is scheduled to be in operation
in 2018. This plant will have a capacity of around a barrel (160 L) a day,
which will allow the partners to carry out tests on quantities in the range of
hundreds of kilos and provide market samples.
In May, a spin-off company called Vertoro BV, was founded by Michael Boot
(leader of the Lignin RICHES project) with the aim to commercialize the
process- and product-IP that is generated within the Lignin RICHES project and
to assist in the R&D activities therein.
