ENK5-2002-30014 Biochemicals and energy from sustainable utilisation of herbaceous biomass

The explosive growth of industrial societies in the last century was achieved through scientific and technological development and easy access to cheap energy such as fossil fuels. Social and environmental imbalances resulted and employment opportunities were concentrated in urban centres, bringing about disturbing pollution concentration and global warming.

Sustainable development, which in political and public terms means primarily careful resource management and greater focus on renewable energy, has become the catchphrase at the start of the 21st century. To meet this challenge, the project partners, involved in biorefinery design for biomass feedstock of grains, grasses, legumes and straw, decided to engage in the production of high-value industrial bioproducts for use as biomass fuels for electricity and heat in industry; and for local as well as private use in the form of biogas and biomass fuel, biobased transportation fuels such as ethanol, and bio-based biorefinery products like biochemicals and materials.

In its overall concept, a biorefinery is a processing plant in which biomass feedstock is converted into a spectrum of valuable products with near zero CO₂ emission.

Biorefineries are based upon petrochemical refinery technology and their development represents a potential key for the integrated production of food, feed chemicals, materials, goods, and fuels.

Activities

The specific focus of the project is the Alaska Lupine (Iceland), grasses and Lucerne (Ireland, Germany). An important reason behind this is the sparse population of Iceland and the large expanses of barren land ideal for lupine growing that could thus be reclaimed to counteract land erosion which has reached quite serious levels.

The approach adopted is to investigate the most relevant data needed for the commercial harvesting of these plants for biomass purposes, such as sustainability of growing, feasibility of harvesting, suitability, etc.

Special focus will also be directed towards producing spartein, which the plant is known to contain in significant amounts. Spartein has important uses as a non-polluting natural insecticide. It is also planned to investigate the use of geothermal energy for the process. Simultaneously, a special biorefinery process will be developed for these species.

Progress

Several key achievements were reported during the first six months of operation (from 1 Oct. 2002). The University of Heidelberg obtained 17-Oxosparteine derivatives that will be evaluated for their biological properties, and succeeded in finding methods for debittering Lupinus nootkatensis.

Biorefinery.de produced crystallised sugar from Alaska lupine straw (main stems) and have started fermentation for ethanol. The residue from this crop is suitable for animal feed (fodder).

BIOPOS produced ethyl lactate and fractionated from 50% (w/w) and 20% (w/w) lactic acid and ethanol with a yield between 55-70%.

The residue of distillation can be used for further esterification (zero-waste process). ATB isolated a very good strain of bacteria producing pure L(+)-lactic acid in high yields (>90%). The strain's most important data from the product formation and growth kinetics were estimated and optimised taking into account the process parameters, temperature and pH value.

Biorefinery.de company produced the following results: The fraction from the main stems and lupine straw are very good carbohydrate sources. The tough and dry residue is a protein-rich source usable for fodder. The late summer harvest of lupine has a very high raw protein value which is better than the protein value of high-quality fodder as well as that of alfalfa. The entire summer plant is suitable for use as feed.

Impact and exploitation

The biorefineries proposed are expected to provide high-tech jobs in rural areas, as well as income to farmers for producing biomass feedstock. Small amounts of fertilisers are envisaged; the refineries will produce biodegradable pesticides and have about zero CO₂ emission. In general, they will yield in total over 100% energy gains. The processes developed will be licensed to qualified parties, and the products mainly sold via professional vendors.