Clariant gives the green light to the building of the LIGNOFLAG biorefinery in Romania
LIGNOFLAG (“Commercial flagship plant for
bioethanol production involving a bio-based value chain built on
lignocellulosic feedstock”) was one of the three flagship projects awarded under
the call 2015 of the BBI JU (see BBI
JU flagship projects - The new generation of European advanced biorefineries).
According to the initial information (see CORDIS Project ID:
709606, last updated on 17/08/2017), the core part of the project would be a
first-of-a-kind commercial flagship plant for lignocellulosic feedstock to
ethanol conversion. It would serve to showcase the techno-economic viability of
an innovative biorefinery concept based on Clariant’s
technology.
On October 31, the Swiss company confirmed the
approval of the investment in the new cellulosic ethanol plant and unveiled
more details about it (see press release). The most relevant ones are summarized in the following
table.
Location
|
Southwestern
part of Romania.
|
Feedstock
and processing capacity
|
250.000
tons/year of wheat straw and other cereal straw.
They will
be sourced from local farmers.
|
Products
and production capacity
|
Cellulosic
ethanol – 50 kton/year (initially, a capacity of 60 kton/year has been
forecasted).
|
Technology
|
Sunliquid®
from Clariant.
|
Timeline
|
Ground
breaking and start of construction planned for 2018.
The plant
is anticipated to deliver its first batch of product in 2020.
|
After five years of operating a pre-commercial plant
in Straubing (Germany), Clariant is ready to scale-up to the next level. The
construction of that facility has also received funding from the European Union
through the project SUNLIQUID (“sunliquid® large scale demonstration plant for
the production of cellulosic ethanol”, FP7-ENERGY-2012-2). The technology is
characterised by an integrated production of process specific enzymes and a simultaneous
C5 and C6 sugars fermentation.
Figure 1. Clariant’s pre-commercial plant in
Straubing (extracted from the website of the company)
In September this year, Clariant already announced the
sign of the first technology license agreement with Enviral, a
member of the Envien Group. Enviral has acquired a license to use sunliquid
technology in a full scale commercial plant for the production of cellulosic
ethanol from agricultural residues (see press
release). This new facility will be owned and operated by Enviral and is
planned to be integrated into the existing facilities at Enviral's Leopoldov
site in Slovakia with an annual production capacity of 50 kton/year.