Green Chemistry and the Biorefinery - The Economic Utilisation of Food Co-Products - page 3

The additional conversion and conditioning steps are carried out to achieve a
better valorisation of biomass by transforming the raw product(s) as
completely as possible into various value-added end-products.
For a better differentiation of biorefineries, the following listing provides
examples of biomass processing plants that are not considered to be biorefineries; 2

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Plants for biomass conversion that convert the feedstock into one quanti-
tatively dominating, marketable product directly after the primary refining
step. Examples are biodiesel plants (main product: biodiesel) or agricultural
biogas plants (main product: bioenergy, namely power and heat).
Plants for biomass conversion that have no combined primary and
secondary refining step at the same location. Examples are paper mills
without connected pulp mills, separate fermentation plants or starch mills
without connected conditioning processes.
Plants for biomass conversion, where the biomass compounds are not
separated, but unmodified or only slightly modified biomass is used or
processed. Examples are wood-processing saw mills, or plants producing
natural fibre insulation.

A 2030 vision for biorefineries was developed during the FP7 Star-Colibri
project that involved European Technology Platforms, Industry Leaders and
world-leading academic centres such as the Green Chemistry Centre of
Excellence (University of York). Although the work was done in great detail,
summaries can be found of this and the 2020 research road map on the project
website (www.star-colibri.eu/).

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1.1.1 Integration with Existing Industrial Value Chains or
Development of New Value Chains
In 2030 many biorefineries will operate at a large-scale commercial level. Most
of these biorefineries will be developed based on the integration with existing
industrial value chains (top-down approach).
Different biorefineries will be developed based on industrial specificities
(sector types) or on geographical specificities (biomass type, quality and
availability, infrastructure, presence of a certain industry, etc.). The choice of
the technological options (processes, feedstocks, location and scale) within the
biorefinery will be made by the industrial actors, based on their competitive
advantages (available industrial equipment, technological and industrial
know-how, access to biomass). Biorefinery development will be driven by the
industrial leaders from sectors such as agroindustry, forest-based industry,
energy sector (power and heat), (bio)fuels industry and chemicals.
However, another interesting development path for biorefineries is envisaged
on the development of new industrial value chains (bottom-up approach). This
refers to newly developed, highly integrated, zero waste sites to produce a broad
variety of products for different markets from different, pretreated and presep-
arated (lignocellulosic) biomass fractions. Usually, the whole biomass crop is