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New products from forest biorefineries
10.05.2010
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is the coordinator of a large EU project called AFORE, which is developing new technologies for the separation, fractionation and primary upgrading of wood-based polymers and valuable low molecular weight compounds to be used by the wood processing mills of today and the future wood biorefineries.
The pulp mills of today could gain additional value from the wood used in pulp
production, if valuable wood components from forest residue and side-streams
could be recovered more effectively without compromising the main process and
energy balance,. New separation and recovery technologies will be important
for future forest biorefineries, too.
The main aim of the
AFORE project is to develop new, industrially adaptable and
techno-economically viable and sustainable methods and technologies for the
separation, fractionation, and primary upgrading of wood polymers and low
molecular weight compounds from forest residue or process side-streams. These
valuable components can then be further utilised as starting materials in
chemical, material and fuel applications. The project is focusing both on
utilising the side-streams of the kraft pulping process employed in paper
making today and on developing new forest biorefinery technologies for the
future.
Project strongly targets at demonstration of the
best technologies in current processes on a pilot or mill scale. It is
believed that some of the technologies to be developed in the project could be
quickly introduced into current processes.
The research
supports the European wood processing industry and its industrial value chain
in their aim of developing new business from forest biorefineries according to
the principles of sustainable development. It is expected that the results
will help the European forest industry, and the pulping industry in
particular, to increase profitability and overall income significantly within
10 years, while simultaneously reducing the formation of waste by helping them
utilise valuable side-stream components.
The AFORE project
(Added-value from polymers and chemicals by new integrated separation,
fractionation and upgrading technologies) will run for four years and has a
budget of EUR 10.9 million. The project will end in 2013. There are 19
participants in total: VTT as the coordinator, 17 other European participants
and one participant from the USA. Corporations (8 in total), research
institutions and universities will come together in a consortium to achieve
the aims of the challenging project.
Project website: http://www.eu-afore.fi