INTEGRATED PROCESS TECHNOLOGY FOR RENEWABLE CHEMICAL PRODUCTION

The key challenge in this project is to demonstrate a fermentation process to produce biobutanol that can compete on price and quality with the incumbent petrochemical equivalent. Not only do we want to compete economically, we also want to demonstrate technology that can be deployed in the EU and Noth America using cellulosic feedstocks that are readily available (sustainable) and do not impact on food supply. The resulting biobutanol will have significant environmental and resource benefits . We aim to do this by integrating advanced, proven and innovative process technology to convert cellulosic feedstocks to sugar and then fermenting the sugar to biobutanol using technology developed by Borregaard and Green Biologics Ltd., respectively. Lucite will validate biobutanol for a chemical applications. The deliverables include a demonstration at pilot scale of the technical feasibility, modelling to determine the economic feasibility at commercial scale and full product life cycle assessment of primary energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions.