On Tuesday, March 10th the kick-off of the European project ChemBeet was
held. At the meeting the project plans were presented to stakeholders
from industry and press. Also, the project was placed in the recent
context of developments in the EU sugar policy and the strongly growing
interest of the chemical industry for the sugar beet as a raw material.
For the province of Flevoland with its strong agricultural industry, the
ChemBeet project marks an important perspective on development of the
Biobased economy. Deputy Jan Nico Appelman addressed the participants
stressing the importance of this innovation for his province and
expressed its support for the initiative.
Efficient sugar
Dutch
agriculture is particularly efficient in the production of sugar, based
on high producing varieties and farmer’s professionalism as well as the
efficiency of the value chain. Per hectare around 15 tons of sugar or
more in the best cases can be produced and together with the high
processing efficiency, this has led to very competitive cost prices for
sugar. With the disappearance of the EU sugar policy, it is expected
that the price for sugar beet will decrease and that the application of
sugar beet for other purposes becomes within reach. Arjen Ravestein of
Deloitte explained his analysis of the opportunities for the Dutch
chemical industry based on sugar beet as raw material. Large chemical
companies in the Netherlands are very interested in this product but -
as also explained by Willem Sederel of Bio-renewables Business Platform -
the chemical industry is not familiar with this raw material and the
agricultural producers nor with possible price and availability
fluctuations.
Betaprocess
Hans van Klink of the
company Dutch Sustainable Development gave a presentation on the Beta
Process technology. This is a technique in which vacuum extrusion
pre-treats liquid biomass by disclosing its cell contents in an energy
efficient way. Thus, the biomass is readily accessible fir
microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria and yeast in a fermentation
process. Van Klink estimates the benefit of this pre-treatment at 10%
compared to traditional techniques, like being used by the sugar
industry. This improvement is important in order to make the price of
the final fermentation product attractive. But that's not all. Also, the
concept of direct processing in which the sugar beet pulp produced by
the Betaprocess is directly fed to microorganisms may result in cost
reduction.
ChemBeet
Chris de Visser of ACRRES explained
the ChemBeet project, which is partly financed by the ERA-NET
Bio-energy joint programming. This project is to demonstrate that the
concept of direct processing in combination with the Betaprocess
technology will result in competitive green products on the basis of
sugar beet for, among other things, the chemical industry. This will be
realized through fermentation of sugars that depending on the
microorganisms can be converted to a broad range of green raw materials.
At first, bio-ethanol will be targeted but also additional organic
acids will be studied, such as lactic acid. The ChemBeet project will
demonstrate and proof the business case on a semi-commercial scale level
so that further upscaling is possible.
Installation
The
ChemBeet project profits from an existing pilot that is used and has
been used to refine corn. Due to some adjustments, the processing of
sugar beet is possible. Attendees were guided along the equipment and
afterwards discussed and exchanged their views on the technology.
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