Graanul Biotech lays the cornerstone for the building of the SWEETWOODS flagship plant

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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.

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