Within the context of sustainability
and the global efforts for CO2
emission reduction, the investigation
of routes for biomass conversion
to fuels and chemicals has
received tremendous attention.
The
production of bio-based building
blocks and the associated production
of bio-polymers could make a big
impact in improving the sustainability
of the chemical and petro-chemical
industry. It also offers a promising
opportunity to improve the overall
economics and sustainability of the
bio-based industry. EU has declared
the bio-based products sector to be
a priority area with high potential for
future growth, reindustrialization, and
addressing societal challenges.
BioCatPolymers is a 3-year European
project funded by the European
Union's Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under
grant agreement No 760802.
The BioCatPolymers consortium
comprises seven partners from
five countries CERTH (Greece), BPF
(Netherlands), PDC (Netherlands),
Quantis (Switzerland), Covestro
(Germany), Sekab (Sweden) and
Visolis (Netherlands). The project is
coordinated by CERTH, the Centre
for Research & Technology Hellas
(Greece).
The main objective of BioCatPolymers
is to demonstrate a cost-effective,
sustainable and effi cient cascade
technological route for the conversion
of low-value, low-quality residual
biomass to bio-polymers with equal
or better performance than their
fossil-based counterparts. The project
targets specifi cally the efficient
and economic production of two
monomers with very large markets,
isoprene and 3 methyl pentanediol
(3MPD).
The novel approach proposed
in BioCatPolymers surpasses
the impediments of traditional
solely bio-based approaches. The
BioCatPolymers process starts
from the optimized pretreatment of
lignocellulosic biomass, combined
with efficient enzymatic hydrolysis to
sugars. Using innovative engineered
strains, sugars are fermented with
high yield to mevalonolactone (MVL).
After separation and purification
from the fermentation broth, MVL
is converted, via highly efficient and
selective thermochemical catalytic
processes, to the monomers, which
are fi nally purified to polymer grade
quality. These monomers can be
further processed for the production
of synthetic rubber, polyurethanes
and polyesters that can be used in
a wide range of every day products,
such as car tires, synthetic shoe
material, life jackets and foams for
insulation.
The project is currently entering
its third year. The first two years
have been very successful and the
project partners have achieved to
develop efficient strains, catalysts
and processes for all steps in the
BioCatPolymers value chain on
small scale. Currently, the scaleup
activities are on-going to
demonstrate the integrated process
on a 0.5 ton biomass/day scale. The
main highlights of the work that has
been performed so far are shown in
the figure below.
Contact information:
Website: www.biocatpolymers.eu
Email: biocatpolymers@cperi.certh.gr