102270Low cost removal of lignin from biomassClosedLaunchpadInnovate UKThe drive to a lower reliance on fossil fuels will impact not just on the fuel and energy sectors but also on the chemical industry: the very large majority of chemicals and materials encountered in everyday life are currently derived from petroleum (hence the term "petrochemicals"). This has resulted in a large, global R&D effort to source chemicals from biomass, one example being the production of poly(lactic acid), PLA, from corn in the mid-West of the US. Plaxica strongly believes that food crops should not be used in this way: instead we are developing technology to manufacture lactic acid and other useful chemicals from existing industrial wastestreams from, for example agriculture, foresty and paper and pulp mills. Pulp mills produce large volumes of waste which are currently incinerated, partially because they are a complex mixture of sugars and an intractable material known as lignin. Plaxica intends to use this grant funding to develop and demonstrate an economically viable process to remove the lignin from pulp mill waste and to show that the sugars left behind can be converted into valuable chemicals.