BIONEER SCALED-UP PRODUCTION OF NEXT-GENERATION CARBOHYDRATE-DERIVED BUILDING BLOCKS TO ENHANCE THE COMPETITIVENESS OF A SUSTAINABLE EUROPEAN CHEMICALS INDUSTRY

Research Project, 2024 – 2028

The platform chemicals sector is currently highly dependent on fossil-fuels. The small volumes of current biobased platform chemicals are reliant on sugar/starch/oil crops which diverts them from food uses and there are also high environmental impacts linked with their land-use and supply cycles. Lignocellulosic feedstocks, particularly residues, are more sustainable but to date the range of chemicals that have been demonstrated at-scale from these has been limited. In particular, there are a range of functionalities associated with fossil-derived platform chemicals that current biobased chemicals cannot replicate. BIONEER addresses this issue by demonstrating production of a new range of carbohydrate-derived building blocks and platform chemicals at TRL6/7. A selection of additional functionalities obtained through carefully controlled optimised modifications and involving both chemical and enzymatic approaches are conferred to the new building blocks that, for the first time at-scale, allow for the mass-market substitution of fossil-derived chemicals in a range of application markets. BIONEER builds on the TRL4/5 advances made in the development of resource and energy-efficient processes for the production of these building blocks in prior projects. The BIONEER consortium and advisory board covers all stages of the value cycle, ranging from the sourcing of sustainable feedstocks to the extraction and modification of biomass fractions, leading to the production of building blocks that are then application tested in the UV-cured-coatings and personal care sectors by industrial partners. Safety and sustainability aspects are integral to BIONEER, which follows, and seeks to improve, the EU’s safe-and-sustainable-by-design (SSbD) framework. It is expected, due to the involvement of key technology developers and industrial partners, that the BIONEER technologies will be rapidly commercialised post-project.