Natural resources are being exhausted due to the great demand of their services and the insufficient actions taken for their preservation. Against this background, the use of waste components from industrial activities as raw materials to obtain high value-added products is of great relevance. Lignin from pulping process is present all over Europe and represents a big source of underexploited material. There is an estimated 70 million tonnes of lignin available from pulping processes worldwide, but much of this is not isolated but burned onsite to provide steam for heat and power production. Until now only about 2% of the lignins available in the pulp and paper industry is commercially used comprising of about 1,000,000 tons/year lignosulphonates originating from sulphite pulping and 104,000 tons/year of kraft lignins produced in the kraft process
FALCON aims to convert this lignin-rich industrial waste of 2G biofuel plants to higher value products, in particular shipping fuels, fuel additives and chemical building blocks. This would be the next consecutive step in turning waste to products, thus minimizing waste and simultaneously providing new alternatives for fossil resource based processes. The FALCON process is based on enzymatic and mild chemical conversion of the lignin waste stream, providing a more environmentally friendly approach to the production of fuels and chemical building blocks. FALCON takes full advantage of the lessons learned over the last 150 years in the petrochemical industry with respect to design of the processes. This implies an initial treatment at the 2G bioethanol plant, converting the waste to a lignin oil that can be more easily transported and also directly used as a low sulphur shipping fuel. It will be further converted into fuel additives and chemical building blocks in centralized facilities.
The project aims to optimize the efficiency and increase the production capacity of this plant to up to 60,000 tons of ethanol per year, as well as to ensure a highly sustainable production process that uses co-products for renewable energy production and soil fertilization. Hence, LIGNOFLAG is supporting the EU in its efforts to reduce GHG emissions and thus accelerate the process of decarbonizing the transport sector. The project intends to establish efficient collaboration between the relevant actors along the whole value chain – from co-products utilization and valorisation (e.g. vinasse as a fertilizer) to advanced bio-ethanol production and product and technology distribution. The new full-scale sunliquid® flagship plant will also create green jobs, especially in rural areas. In doing so, a new value chain will be established and support the transformation from a fossil-based economy to a bio-based, circular economy