Forest and agricultural residues are transformed into a series of complementary marketable green chemicals and energy. Our strategy focused on chemical intermediates that are difficult to produce from petroleum and that have an established market. We applied the full green chemistry philosophy by aiming at transforming all reactants (wood) into products by minimising energy and water consumption as well as effluent emission (air and water), and by avoiding complex separation/purification steps. We used catalytic reaction engineering and industrial biotechnology as preferred technologies together with life-cycle analysis to optimise process and environmental protection.
Projects focused specifically on:
- Biorefinery opportunities in a TMP mill
- Hydroxymethylfurfural and advance chemicals from cellulosics
- Microwave for biphasic systems reaction
- Green chemical in fluidized bed
- Biomass gasification for green chemicals
- Syngas production and modelling
- Syngas to chemicals
- Chemicals from lignin
- Catalytical deconstruction of lignin and characterisation
- Biochemical deconstruction of lignin and polymerisation
