Biorefinery for Fuel production from energy crops

Sustainable use and production of renewable bio-resources is one of the key instruments for achieving the goal of 20% CO2 reduction that the European Community is aiming by year 2025 At the same time decrease of fossile fuels dependency and boosting of the rural development in Europe will be achieved. To gain full benefits from biomass conversion it is important to utilise all parts of biomass in an integrated process scheme by a multi-product scheme, so called “biorefinery”. By producing multiple products (bioenergy and green chemicals), through an integrated process the differences in biomass components and intermediates can be exploited and maximize the value derived from the biomass and thus achieve a competitive economy. This project will investigate and develop an integrated and innovative whole crop approach to produce a multi-product biofuel (ethanol, biohydrogen, methane, biodiesel) and high-value products (glucosinolates, high-quality proteins rich in lysine and methionine etc.) from oily plants based on a number of novel and mutually synergistic production methods. The evaluation criteria assisting the development of the biorefinery concept will be based on an feed forwards and backwards assessment of the economical and environmental benefits and drawbacks related to the concept. With the proposed project we intent to:
Optimise harvest, transportation logistics of oily plants to the biorefinery facilities and return the process effluents to be used as fertilisers on the agricultural soil. From the oil part of the plant biodiesel will be produced, by a new enzymatic transesterification method. High value products such as glucosinolates, high value proteins etc. extracted from the press cake will be compared with alternative utilizations From the straw part of the oily plant a chain of processes will result in bioethanol production (from hexoses), biohydrogen (from pentoses) and finally, effluents from different processes will be treated by anaerobic digestion for methane production. To document the level of sustainability, identify key environmental impacts, and evaluate market implementation aspects, the individual process as well as the combined biorefinery concept will be evaluated through life cycle assessment methods as well as with respect to process economy. The results from the above research will be used to demonstrate an integrated biorefinery operation for producing biofuels and high-value products from rapeseed or oilseed with a processing/marketing link between agriculture and industry.