Biorizon – the profitable way to bio-aromatics
Shared Research Center Biorizon, an initiative of TNO and VITO, has been co-creating technologies for the production of bio-aromatics at the Green Chemistry Campus in Bergen op Zoom since 2013. Together with industrial partners, Biorizon creates and develops innovative chemical processes for the production of renewable aromatics from residual biomass.
Aromatics are important building blocks for the chemical industry: no less than 40% of chemicals are aromatic, and they bring essential functionalities such as durability and thermal and UV stability to products like plastics, resins and coatings. Bio-aromatics provide new functionalities and an impactful and green alternative for current petrochemical products that are difficult to re-use or recycle, including paints, adhesives and lubricants. Their aim is to enable commercial production of bio-aromatic building blocks by 2025.
Sustainable alternatives to petrochemical aromatics
Because of climate change and exhaustion of the world’s natural resources, there is a need for sustainable alternatives to petrochemical aromatics.
Together with industrial partners, Biorizon develops technologies to use residual biomass and recycle streams for the production of bulk and specialty aromatics.
Biorizon collaborates with global feedstock providers, technology developers, process operators and brand owners to make commercial production of bio-aromatics feasible by 2025. Thanks to high-quality facilities, specialized knowledge, years of experience and the successful involvement of the entire bio-aromatics value chain, they manage to produce bio-aromatics continuously (on a kg/h scale). They are currently validating their continuous processes and working towards the next stage: demonstration. This makes Shared Research Center Biorizon the most advanced and valued research program in bio-aromatics worldwide.
If you share similar ambitions and want to collaborate with the Shared Research Center, please join their community, visit the Biorizon headquarters at the Green Chemistry Campus in Bergen op Zoom (NL) or reach out to their business development managers.
Highlights of Biorizon's research horizons
- Thermochemical Conversion of Biomass to Bio-Aromatics: Extensive piloting of gasification-based BTX co-production and pyrolysis-based lignin to bio-aromatics to allow technology scale-up and bio-aromatics application development. First industrial application testing shows promising results.
- Sugars to Bio-Aromatics: High quality facilities & focus on scale-up enable the continuous production of novel specialty aromatics. Samples are available at the multi-kilogram scale.
Application testing by companies show promising properties for adhesives, polymers, coatings and lubricants.
- Lignin to Bio-Aromatics: The current focus lays on the engineering and construction of pilot plant ‘LignoValue’ for metal-catalyzed depolymerisation with a targeted output of 10 kg/h and the development of a lignin application centre for biopolymers and additives.
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