SUPRABIO

Sustainable Products from Economic Processing of Biomass in Highly Integrated Biorefineries

  • Project no.3332
  • Duration 02/2010 - 09/2014

A biorefinery is a multi-disciplinary and complex concept addressing at the same time the production of value-added bio-products (chemical building blocks, materials) and bioenergy (biofuels, power and heat) from biomass, within a sustainability assessment carried out along the entire value chain and life cycle.

From February 2010 to January 2014, the SUPRABIO project will research, develop and demonstrate a toolkit of

  • novel generic processes together with
  • advanced process intensification
  • heat management
  • utilities management and
  • integration methodologies

that can be applied to a range of biorefinery scenarios based on sustainable biomass feedstocks.

This is supported by

  • an economic and lifecycle assessment of the resulting gains in energy efficiency and conversion of renewable carbon, together with
  • an implementation strategy based on a product mix with optimal value.

The project will contribute to the European Lead Market initiative on Bio-Based products and to the implementation of the European Energy & Climate Package. The biorefinery concept is also an important feature of the European Industrial Bioenergy Initiative (EIBI), one of the six industrial initiatives of the European Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan, which aims to speed up the development of clean, efficient and low-carbon technologies.

Wuppertal Institute's role in the project is to carry out specialist analysis of social and political assessment and impact of biorefinery development and implementation.
Innovative biorefinery concepts and technology routes will be assessed with regard to potential effects which may occur as a consequence of increased application and demand. The assessment will consider impacts involving land use change.
Social effects will be assessed with regard to existing approaches in the context of social life-cycle assessment and approaches applied in related projects at European level. Current approaches to integrate the social dimension besides the economic and environmental ones into a comprehensive sustainability assessment of feedstocks, processes, value chains and scenarios for biomass based products will be taken into account.
Another focus shall be on expected net gains of employment.
Policy based strategies for development of biorefineries in Europe will be analysed with regard to foster the use of biomass for biobased materials as opposed to bioenergy.

The SUPRABIO project is financially supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission (grant agreement 241640). SUPRABIO is supported as part of a joint call of various EC Directorates on the development of biorefineries within the Work Programme 2009. Within this call, the Commission supports three four-year collaborating research projects (SUPRABIO, BIOCORE and EUROBIOREF) and a two-year coordination action project (STAR-COLIBRI).
The SUPRABIO consortium includes sixteen research partners from nine European countries: three industrial companies, seven small and medium enterprises (SMEs), three research institutes and three universities.


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