by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In Brussels, The Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking, a public-private partnership between the EU and the Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), has approved the funding of 10 projects totalling €120 million to boost the EU capacity to stimulate growth and jobs via a more circular, low carbon and sustainable bioeconomy.

The 7 funded research projects will tackle specific value chain challenges such as sustainability, technology and competitiveness. The 2 demonstration projects will demonstrate the technological and economic viability of biorefinery systems and processes for making chemicals from wood, and for making high value products for detergents, personal care, paints and coatings and composites from sugar beet pulp. The industrial scale flagship project will make use of cardoon, an under-utilised oil crop grown on arid and marginal lands, to extract vegetable oils to be further converted into bio-based products (bio-lubricants, cosmetics, bio-plastics). By- and co-products from the process will also be valorised for energy, feed for animals and added value chemical production.

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The European Commission is the public partner in the BBI. It supports it with a contribution of €975 million from Horizon 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation from 2014 to 2020. The activities of the BBI complement the activities funded under Horizon 2020 and seek to establish synergies where relevant.

The Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC) is the industrial partner in the PPP. It is made of a unique mix of sectors including agriculture, agro-food, biotechnology / technology providers, forestry/pulp and paper, chemicals and energy. BIC was established in 2012 to collectively represent the private sector in the BBI. To date, BIC has close to 80 full industrial members (large, SMEs, clusters) and about 150 associate members (RTOs, universities, associations, technology platforms).

BIC supports the BBI with a contribution of €2.7 billion, of which €975 million is used to support research and innovation activities, and another €1.7 is provided in the form of additional activities.

BBI 2014 funded projects

Research

US4GREENCHEM: Efficient pre-treatment of lignocellulosic feedstock to advanced bio-based chemicals and biomaterials

PROVIDES: New sustainable pulping technologies

SmartLi and GreenLight:  Fibres and polymers from lignin

CARBOSURF: Fermentation processes to obtain biosurfactants and specialty carbohydrates from agricultural and agro-industrial streams

PROMINENT: Protein products from plant residues

NewFert: Nutrient recovery from bio-based waste streams and residues.

Demonstration

PULP2VALUE: integrated and cost-effective cascading biorefinery system to refine sugar beet pulp and isolate high value products. (Coordinator: Royal Cosun)

ALCHEM: wood to chemicals. (Coordinator: UPM)

Flagship

FIRST2RUN: first-of-a-kind value chain at industrial scale. (Coordinator: Novamont)  READ MORE and MORE (Biobased Industries Consortium)