1. A Scottish biorefinery based on wood fibre?
MC Jarvis
Glasgow University and IBioIC
IBioIC intro
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

2. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Policy drivers
Scotland's national strategy aims to:
Grow industrial biotechnology related turnover to £900m by 2025
Increase the number of IB-using companies to 200.
Building on Success, National Plan for IB Progress Report 2015
Create one or more Scottish biorefineries
Biorefinery Roadmap for Scotland, 2015
Ambitious plans
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

3. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
What is a biorefinery?
Produces a liquid biofuel, like bioethanol, from biological feedstocks
Is large in scale, like an oil refinery
Leads to additional co-products
Conventional idea, built around bioethanol production - may need re-thinking
This picture of what a biorefinery should look like is now being challenged
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

4. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Corn biorefineries: first-generation biofuels
Feedstock is a food product, easily converted to sugar for fermentation: maize, wheat or sugar beet
Led to food price inflation and food security problems
High fertiliser inputs
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

5. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Second-generation biofuels
Feedstock is lignocellulosic biomass: wood, straw, waste
Sustainable and avoids competition with food
Lower feedstock costs
Conversion to sugar is
difficult and expensive
Oil price means more
Interest in non-fuel products
Key problem is technical difficulty of converting cellulose, protected by lignin as in wood, into glucose
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

6. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Existing second-
generation biorefineries
N America: mainly using maize residues
Europe: e.g. Sarpsborg, Norway (Borregaard), Lapeenranta, Finland (UPM); some use wood, based mainly on pre-existing chemical pulp mills
Scotland: a mechanical pulp mill is not a good starting point.
Cellucomp: beet waste to nanocellulose. Celtic Renewables: Distillery waste to industrial solvents
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

7. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Biorefining feedstocks
In Scotland, wood has emerged from a number of scoping exercises as the front-running raw material
Biorefining in Scotland: Report for Scottish Enterprise by E4tech (UK) Ltd, 2014
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

8. ‘Sugar platform’ processes
Wood
Chemical pre-treatment
Hemicelluloses
Cellulose
Lignin
Depolymerisation
Sugar
Phenolic resins Aromatic feedstock chemicals
Carbon fibre
Fermentation
Bioethanol or other products
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

9. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Sugar platform processes
Pretreatment is key to success of biorefinery
Many competing chemical pretreatment technologies, all expensive
Wider range of pretreatments available for hardwoods than softwoods
Ideally, the pretreatment should also permit something useful to be done with the lignin
Profitability depends on competing sources of sugar. An alternative is to convert the cellulose to nanocellulose.
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

10. ‘Syngas platform’ processes
Wood
High-temperature gasification
Bio-oil
Syngas
Bio-char
Bubbling fermentation
Fischer-Tropsch conversion
Hydrocarbon fuel and other products
Ethanol
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

11. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
‘Syngas platform’ processes
Less fussy about composition of raw material
Syngas processing chemistry is less developed, although Ineos and Scottish Universities are leaders
Markets not well developed for bio-oil and biochar
Scottish speciality
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

12. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Wood extractives
2-20% of clearwood depending on species (2% for Sitka). Higher levels in knots, roots, bark
Extraction process easily added to front end of biorefinery process
Complex mixtures of unfamiliar chemicals
Composition quite different according to species and anatomy
Scottish speciality
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

13. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
What kind of wood fibre is required?
First call would be on small roundwood, chips and perhaps sawdust.
Biorefinery community looks out for ‘waste’ streams.
Pretreatment step easiest for hardwoods
Competition with biomass for co-firing and other low-value markets
So competition with biomass for co-firing. Not much prospect of premium over prices for co-firing. Could be premium from sawdust (particle size) or from utilising extractives, e.g. Knotwood cut out from finger-jointed products. Lignin and nanocellulose could also create premium, especially if wood quality can be helpful for nanocellulose
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017

14. M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017
Opportunities
Strong Scottish Government support for a demo-scale wood- based biorefinery, using approx 500,000 m3 of wood per year
Potential pharmaceutical buyer identified for sugar from a wood source. Sugar from Sitka spruce gave promising results in preliminary trials
Two companies interested in building pilot thermochemical biorefineries in Scotland
Ineos could provide infrastructure for a biorefinery at Grangemouth: Irvine and two sites in Fife also possible
Scottish academic expertise: extractives and lignin technology
M.C. Jarvis. SFTT NE Meeting, Finzean Hall, 8 March 2017