Scion receives funding to develop a bark biorefinery concept
Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.
The Endeavour Fund Investment Plan is a program
of the Ministry of Business Innovation and
Employment of New Zealand that invests in research projects that aim to
improve the lives of the New Zealanders by enhancing the economy, the environment
and the society. In the last edition, a total of 249.1 million NZD has been
awarded to 69 new research projects (see press
release). The “Bark Biorefinery” of Scion is one of them. This
organisation is a Crown Research Institute (CRI), a government-owned company
that carries out scientific research for the benefit of New Zealand. It is
specialised in research, science and technology development for the forestry,
wood and wood-derived materials and other biomaterial sectors.
Figure 1. Scion will develop a bark biorefinery
concept
The full title of the project is “Bark
Biorefinery: Unlocking new hydrophobic polymers”, it
will last 5 years and have a contract value of 9.98 million NZD. It seeks to
develop a bark biorefinery concept and new value chains linking bark processing
to the extraction and supply of novel products, opening new export
opportunities for global specialty chemicals and associated products.
By using the latest in green chemistry
approaches, Scion pretends to release the untapped potential for pine bark
derived compounds in current and new applications. It is expected to extract
and fractionate significant quantities of the suberin (hydrophobic biopolymer
with waterproofing properties) together with high value monomeric compounds and
targeted molecular weight fractions of polyphenolic tannins as by-products. In
addition, the residual bark left after extraction will be converted to
renewable solid fuels, allowing the integrated biorefinery to approach energy
neutrality.