The focus of the activities of the consortium partners is summarized below.
Cosun: Design, build and operate Demo production plants for micro-fibers, galacturonic acid and arabinose. Value chain development for the Pulp2Value products. Project coordinator
Orineo: Application of various products, based on sugar beet pulp, in flooring, panels, adhesives and glues. Prototype development.
Refresco Gerber UK: Exploration of the application of various Pulp2Value products in beverages such as soda drinks and juices.
Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant: Pilot testing of unit operations and testing of process concepts to support process engineering for the Demo plants.
nova-Institute: Economic and environmental analysis of the biorefinery concepts and support on IP management and communication activities. A stakeholder analysis was conducted and two stakeholder workshops were organized.
Wageningen University: Investigating the effects of arabinose in various food matrices on human glucose metabolism, satiety and potential health effects.
Wageningen Food & Biobased Research: Research and process development on feed stock pretreatment, synthesis routes to biobased building blocks and exploration of new applications for various building blocks. Development of biosurfactants and evaluation of properties.
The project consortium realized most of the project goals. Demo plants were build and are running and further up-scaling is ongoing. At least 9 potential value chains were identified although not every value chain turned out to be interesting. At the same time new value chains were identified and are now being further developed. During the project many technological, practical and organizational problems needed to be solved along the way. But this is part of the valuable experiences and learnings that go along with a Demo project. These learnings are essential for a proper business case analyses and for the design and realization of the full scale biorefinery plant.
In the last year of the project two external workshops were organized to share the learnings of the Pulp2value project with the public. The first workshop was about the process towards realization of fully integrated biorefineries. The second workshop was on value chain development and on how to position biobased products in such way that the benefits are appealing for consumers. Many people from industry, academia, governments, media etc. attended the workshops and they were perceived very well by the attendees. During the project the consortium partners promoted this BBI JU project and the products in many ways.
