PhD defence: Development of the acetone organosolv biorefinery process - From sustainable biomass to biobased products

Industrialization, agricultural and technological advances, and concurrent growth of the world population and prosperity resulted in an enormous increase in the use of all earth’s resources, including fossil fuels. This led to the emission of greenhouse gasses, such as CO₂. The reliance on fossil-based resources is untenable due to climate change, and economically and strategically troublesome due to price volatility and supply chain risks. To mitigate these risks, our fossil-based society needs to transform into a (circular) renewables-based society. Biomass will need to play a key role in this transition, through the development of biorefineries converting biomass into sustainable energy carriers, chemicals, and materials.

The work in this thesis focuses on the development and chemical understanding of a novel biorefinery process based on so-called acetone organosolv fractionation. This process produces high quality products (cellulose fibers, sugars, furanics and lignin) from a variety of agricultural, forestry, food processing and roadside verge residues. As biorefineries are at the heart of many biobased value chains, the goal of these efforts was to develop a robust, scalable, and cost-effective organosolv process with increased product yield and quality. Furthermore, the biorefinery process was developed in such a way that it can use different feedstocks as intake, to improve the connection of the biorefinery with sustainable biomass supply chains.

In addition, optimized processes downstream of the process of organosolv fractionation allowed us to connect the biorefinery output to high value biobased (circular) products, such as construction panels, packaging, textiles, insulation foams, resins, coatings, adhesives, and platform chemicals. Having successfully validated the fractionation process at the pilot scale, TNO and partners are now working towards market implementation of the process via a dedicated demonstration plant.