VITO launches pilot line to produce biobased aromatics from lignin

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Type of post: NEWS IN BRIEF.

The first and only pilot line of bio-aromatics from lignin in Europe was officially opened by Biorizon co-initiator VITO. With the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project LignoValue Pilot, Biorizon co-initiator VITO, Worley Belgium and PMV realised a pilot line to demonstrate technologies to depolymerise lignin in a continuous process. The pilot plant allows proof-of-concepts of the different process steps to be delivered. The LignoValue Pilot is moreover located on a specialised site, where safety, material supply and product flow are guaranteed. The proximity of VITO, Flanders' sustainability research organisation, is a major asset.

Figure 1. VITO launches pilot line to produce biobased aromatics from lignin (taken from the press release)

Most of the processes for producing lignin-based bioaromatics have already been developed and demonstrated at lab scale. Since 2018, VITO has committed to design and build a pilot plant that will enable the first production of bioaromatics from lignin. Here, Worley Belgium is the engineering partner, also investing in their own knowledge acquisition through the ERDF LignoValue Pilot project. The LignoValue Pilot was built by Dutch engineering company Zeton and installed at the VITO site in early 2022.

To achieve an industrially relevant breakthrough in this field, the pilot plant can produce more than 100 kg of innovative bio-aromatics on a daily basis, and through continuous processing. To this end, lignin will be cut into smaller chemical building blocks in a solvent in the presence of a catalyst and hydrogen. The availability in sufficient quantities of these small lignin-based building blocks will create a new value chain of innovative bio-aromatics, in cooperation with material producers such as Kingspan and Kaneka. The new value chains will contribute to reducing the chemical industry's dependence on fossil and secondary raw materials, contributing to reducing the effects of climate change (CO2 reduction).

Moreover, the intended pilot line is flexibly designed so that different process conditions can be adapted and tested to produce the desired bio-aromatic fractions for market-oriented applications and product developments. All this should allow to provide the necessary techno-economic proof-of-concepts to reach the ultimate goal: building and operating a demo plant in Flanders for the conversion of lignin to bio-based functionalised aromatics and the development of a lignin-based value chain of new chemicals.

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