PES BBI Biochemicals and materials

The overall goal of the 'Green binder for carbon products' project is to develop biobased binders for carbon products to replace todays fossile based coke tar binders. This will if successful reduce the CO2 footprint of the metallurgic industry and impro ve the working environment in the same industry. In addition, it has the potential to increase demand for and utilization of biomass, as for instance Norwegian forest biomass and other local biomasses, close to the manufacturing sites for carbon products. The carbon products used in the metallurgic industry are both reducing carbon, as for instance in Søderberg electrodes and other types of electrodes for aluminium and ferrosilicium production, and carbon linings for the kilns. The coking tar binder use d for these carbon products today, is a fossile product richt in polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which constitute a major health problem in the metal industry. The large volumes of such binders (4 mill tons annual consumption world wide) also constitute a substantial contribution to greenhouse gases, since it is oxidized to CO2 during metal production. Elkem Carbon and Borregaard have joined forces to solve this problem and create a new business opportunity for both companies. This is an ideal partne rship since Elkem Carbon has the knowledge and R&D facilities to develop new carbon products for the metal industry (being the leading supplyer of carbon products today), and Borregaard have a leading position in biorefining and long experience in produci ng biobased binders. In the project Borregaard will tailormake biobased binders with optimized properties for use in carbon products. Elkem Carbon will test the new binders in both their pilot and full scale facilities, and make the necessary adjustments and optimizations in order to make use of these novel green binders in their commercial manufacturing processes possible.

From a range of wood sources, like spruce pulpwood, demolition wood, wood shavings from furniture (IKEA)and energy crops (fastgrowing poplar) etc. the biomass will be treated in the BALi pretreatment and separation process at Borregaards BALI Demo plant. They will also be processed at BPF's pilot/dempo plant by steam explosion. The pre-treatment and separation procss will be Borregaards BALI process. From the sugar platform, several chemicals, like for instance Avantiums furfural dicarboxylic acid (FD CA) for production of polyesters, DSM's vitamins, enzymes and plastics, Green Biologics bio-butanol (to polyesters or chemicals)etc. The sugars from the BALI sugar platform are among the purest second generation sugar streams avaialbel, and useful directl y without purification to ethanol. This is not a topic for this project. Here more demanding fermtation processes are the scope, and hence further purification of the sugars are needed. Lignosulfonates will be converted to aromatics by catalytic conver sion (Haldor-Topsøe). Chemicals and materials will be produced at demo-scale to demonstrate the usefulness in applications.