Development of the acetone organosolv biorefinery process: From sustainable biomass to biobased products

Industrialization, agricultural and technological advances and concurrent growth of the world population and prosperity resulted in an enormous increase in the use of all earth’s resources, including fossil ones, which use have led to the emission of greenhouse gasses such as CO2. The reliance on fossil-based resources is untenable due to climate change, and economically and strategically troublesome due to price volatility and supply chain risks. To mitigate these risks, our fossil-based society needs to change to a (circular) renewables-based one. Biomass will need to play a key role in this transition, through the development of biorefineries converting biomass into sustainable energy carriers, chemicals, and materials. The work in this PhD Thesis focuses on the development and detailed chemical understanding of a novel biorefinery process, based on so-called acetone organosolv fractionation, to produce high quality products (in this case, cellulose fibers, sugars, furanics and lignin) from a variety of agricultural, forestry, food processing and roadside verge residues. As biorefineries are at the heart of many biobased value chains, the goal of these efforts was to develop a robust, scalable, and cost-effective organosolv process with improved fractionation performance (i.e., increased product yield and quality). Furthermore, the biorefinery process was developed such that it can use different feedstocks as intake, this to improve (upstream) connection of the biorefinery with sustainable biomass supply chains. In addition, optimized processes downstream of the process of organosolv fractionation allowed us to connect the biorefinery output to high value biobased (circular) products such as construction panels, packaging, textiles, insulation foams, resins, coatings, adhesives, and platform chemicals. Having successfully validated the fractionation process at the pilot scale, TNO and partners are now working towards market implementation of the process via a dedicated demonstration plant.