Graanul Biotech lays the cornerstone for the building of the SWEETWOODS flagship plant
Type of post: NEWS.
Last month, Graanul Biotech (Graanul Invest subsidiary) laid the
cornerstone for the SWEETWOODS flagship plant in Estonia. It will be a
first-of-a-kind demo facility using sustainable hardwood biomass as raw input
material to produce sugars and lignin. Construction works started in July and the
estimated time of completion of the first stage is the first half of 2020.
Press release: “Flagship plant received the
cornerstone”, 18/9/2019.
Figure 1. A time capsule was set in the
cornerstone of the plant by Raul Kirjanen (member of the management board of
Graanul Invest), Peep Pitk (research and development manager) and Rait Pihelgas
(Järva rural municipality mayor). The capsule included a cup with high purity
lignin, pre-fractionated woodchips, the business plan of the project, the
foundation articles of Graanul Biotech and the newspaper of the day.
Partners of the engineering and construction
works
The technology licence of the flagship plant
comes from Sweetwater Energy, the engineering is done by De Smet Engineers
& Contractors from Belgium, the special parts of the preliminary project
and main project were designed by Sweco Projekt AS and Maru Ehitus AS is the main
contractor of the construction.
The project
Name
|
Production
and deploying of high purity lignin and affordable platform chemicals through
wood-based sugars
|
Call
|
H2020-BBI-JTI-2017,
Bio-based Industries Innovation action - Flagship.
Grant
agreement ID: 792061.
|
Start
date
|
1 June
2018
|
End date
|
31 May
2022
|
Overall
budget
|
43,233,731.25
€
|
EU
contribution
|
20,959,745.12
€
|
Aim
|
The objective of the SWEETWOODS project is to
demonstrate on an industrial level successful and profitable production of
high purity lignin as well as C5 and C6 carbohydrates from hardwood by
establishing a biorefinery having throughput capacity 80 bone dry tons/day.
|
Applications
of the products
|
The dried solid lignin and depolymerized
lignin will be used in elastomer foams for tube insulation, rigid
polyurethane foam panels for insulation and polymer compounds for injection
moulding.
The high purity sugars (at least, glucose,
xylose and fructose) will be used in the production of bio-isobutene and
xylitol production.
|
Partners
|
- 2B Srl
(Italy)
- Global
Bioenergies (France)
- Graanul
Biotech OÜ (Estonia)
- Metgen
OY (Finland)
- Recticel
N.V. (Belgium)
- Rohstoffe
MBH (Germany)
- Spinverse
OY (Finland)
- Tecnaro
Gesellschaft Zur Industriellen Anwendung Nachwachsender
- Ultima GMBH
(Germany)
- Vertech
Group (France)
|
The technology
SWEETWOODS flagship plant will use Sweetwater’s
Sunburst pre-processing technology. According to the information of the project
website, such technology fractionates biomass into biocomponents faster and
more efficiently than any other technology available on the market, with lower GHG
emissions and decreased water and chemicals use.
Unlike other existing biorefinery concepts,
SWEETWOODS plant utilizes all the fractions of the biomass feedstock, with a
minimum 95% of its initial carbon content utilised. The current TRL of the technology
is 7, aiming to reach TRL 9 by the end of the project. The efficient
fractionation and conversion of biomass is enabled by novel enzymatic
solutions.
