Clari­ant suc­cess­fully con­cludes test­ing of energy crop mis­canthus at Straub­ing plant for GRACE project

Clari­ant (IBB net­work mem­ber) announced today that it has con­duc­ted tests on approx­im­ately 30 tons of mis­canthus provided by INA, Croatia’s lead­ing oil and gas com­pany. The mis­canthus bio­mass was har­ves­ted and baled at the INA demon­stra­tion site in Croa­tia in Feb­ru­ary this year and shipped for pro­cessing to Clariant’s pre-com­mer­cial sun­li­quid plant in Straub­ing, Ger­many for con­ver­sion into ligno­cel­lu­losic sug­ars and eth­an­ol. INA is a con­sor­ti­um mem­ber of the pub­licly fun­ded pro­ject ​“GRow­ing Advanced indus­tri­al Crops on mar­gin­al lands for biorE­finer­ies” (GRACE www​.grace​-bbi​.eu). The GRACE pro­ject has received fund­ing from the ​„Bio-based Indus­tries Joint Undertaking“(BBI JU) under the European Union’s Hori­zon 2020 research and innov­a­tion pro­gramme. The con­sor­ti­um con­sists of 22 part­ners from uni­ver­sit­ies, the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and the industry. The aims and object­ives of the pro­ject are to optim­ize vari­ous mis­canthus value chains, to pro­duce sus­tain­able products with a strong mar­ket poten­tial and to devel­op mis­canthus as a sus­tain­able feed­stock resource for cul­tiv­a­tion on mar­gin­al, con­tam­in­ated and aban­doned land. Against this back­ground, Clari­ant was asked by the GRACE con­sor­ti­um to run tests of mis­canthus as a feed­stock for the pro­duc­tion of ligno­cel­lu­losic sug­ars and eth­an­ol. Final res­ults prove that the sun­li­quid tech­no­logy can suc­cess­fully con­vert mis­canthus bio­mass into ligno­cel­lu­losic sug­ars and eth­an­ol, con­firm­ing the bene­fits of the sug­ar pro­cess plat­form. Thanks to the flex­ible sun­li­quid pro­cess design, ligno­cel­lu­losic sug­ars can be gen­er­ated as an inter­me­di­ate product that have the poten­tial to serve as a build­ing block for future pro­duc­tion of bio-based chem­ic­als. Mak­ing fur­ther use of Clariant’s pro­pri­et­ary enzyme plat­form for feed­stock spe­cif­ic enzymes can finally open up the full poten­tial of this prom­ising energy crop. ​“We are very pleased to work with renowned part­ners such as INA and oth­er GRACE con­sor­ti­um mem­bers. These feed­stock tests con­sti­tute an import­ant mile­stone for Clari­ant. It is for the first time that we tested mis­canthus – a high yield­ing and robust energy crop — in our pre-com­mer­cial plant in Straub­ing. Once again, this showed the flex­ib­il­ity and effi­ciency of the sun­li­quid tech­no­logy plat­form when it comes to dif­fer­ent ligno­cel­lu­losic feed­stock”, emphas­izes Dr. Markus Rar­bach, Head of Busi­ness Line Bio­fuels and Deriv­at­ives at Clari­ant. ​“As the bioeth­an­ol demon­stra­tion case lead­er of the EU-fun­ded GRACE pro­ject, we are sat­is­fied with the test­ing res­ults. These res­ults are a push towards fur­ther devel­op­ment of a bio-based value chain and a cir­cu­lar bio-eco­nomy for fur­ther com­mer­cial con­di­tions”, said Stje­pan Nikolić, Oper­at­ing Dir­ect­or of Refin­ing and Mar­ket­ing at INA. This demon­strates that mis­canthus, also known as ele­phant grass or China reed, proves itself as an inter­est­ing feed­stock option for the pro­duc­tion of ligno­cel­lu­losic sug­ars and eth­an­ol. Once cul­tiv­ated in mar­gin­al lands, the plant grows rap­idly over 15 – 20 years as a per­man­ent crop, has a low min­er­al con­tent and offers a high yield per hec­tare. Pesti­cides and fer­til­izers are not required on a yearly basis, which fur­ther adds to mis­canthus’ eco­lo­gic­al bene­fits. Over the past sev­en years Clariant’s pre-com­mer­cial plant has also demon­strated cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol pro­duc­tion on agri­cul­tur­al residues such as corn stover, sug­ar­cane bagasse and straw as well as wheat, bar­ley and rice straw. In the fall of last year, Clari­ant broke ground on its green­field first-of-its-kind full-scale com­mer­cial cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol plant in Podari, the south­west­ern region of Romania. The new plant, with an annu­al pro­duc­tion capa­city of 50.000 tons, will be a flag­ship site, con­firm­ing com­pet­it­ive­ness and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the sun­li­quid tech­no­logy at com­mer­cial scale thus sup­port­ing Clariant’s sun­li­quid licens­ing busi­ness strategy.

www​.clari​ant​.com

Clari­ant is a focused and innov­at­ive spe­cialty chem­ic­al com­pany, based in Mut­tenz near Basel/​Switzerland. On 31 Decem­ber 2018 the com­pany employed a total work­force of 17,901. In the fin­an­cial year 2018, Clari­ant recor­ded sales of CHF 4.404 bil­lion for its con­tinu­ing busi­nesses. The com­pany reports in three busi­ness areas: Care Chem­ic­als, Cata­lys­is and Nat­ur­al Resources. Clariant’s cor­por­ate strategy is based on five pil­lars: focus on innov­a­tion and R&D, add value with sus­tain­ab­il­ity, repos­i­tion port­fo­lio, intensi­fy growth, and increase prof­it­ab­il­ity.

www​.sun​li​quid​.com

sun­li­quid® is an innov­at­ive bio­tech­no­lo­gic­al meth­od for man­u­fac­tur­ing cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol from agri­cul­tur­al residues such as cer­eal straw, corn stover or sug­ar­cane bagasse. In the com­pletely integ­rated pro­cess, highly optim­ized, raw mater­i­al-spe­cif­ic biocata­lysts decom­pose cel­lu­lose and hemi­cel­lu­lose in high yields under stable pro­cessing con­di­tions into fer­ment­able sug­ar. The pro­cess-integ­rated pro­duc­tion of the biocata­lysts offers flex­ib­il­ity and reduces pro­duc­tion costs. In the next step, an optim­ized fer­ment­a­tion organ­ism sim­ul­tan­eously con­verts C5 and C6 into eth­an­ol with high yields and short reac­tion times. A highly optim­ized puri­fic­a­tion pro­cess is instru­ment­al in enabling all the energy required for the pro­cess to be derived from the pro­cess byproducts like insol­uble lignin. The res­ult­ing cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol saves around 95% of CO2 emis­sions when com­pared to fossil gas­ol­ine. Since July 2012, Clari­ant has been oper­at­ing a pre­com­mer­cial plant in Straub­ing, which pro­duces up to 1,000 met­ric tons of cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol every year, con­firm­ing tech­nic­al and eco­nom­ic per­form­ance. Clari­ant licenses the sun­li­quid® tech­no­logy plat­form glob­ally. The first license was sold in Septem­ber 2017. Clari­ant also announced invest­ment into a first-of-its kind com­mer­cial facil­ity in Romania, where ground­break­ing took place in Septem­ber 2018. SUN­LI­QUID® IS A TRADE­MARK OF CLARI­ANT REGISTERED IN MANY COUN­TRIES.

www​.ina​.hr

INA Group has the lead­ing role in Croa­tian oil busi­ness and a sig­ni­fic­ant region­al role in oil and gas explor­a­tion and pro­duc­tion, oil pro­cessing, and the dis­tri­bu­tion of oil and oil deriv­at­ives. INA Group con­sists of sev­er­al affil­i­ated entit­ies, entirely or par­tially owned by INA, d.d. The Group is based in Zagreb, Croa­tia. Apart from Croa­tia, INA cur­rently has busi­ness oper­a­tions in the seg­ment of oil and gas explor­a­tion and pro­duc­tion in Angola and Egypt. The oil is pro­cessed at INA’s oil refiner­ies in Rijeka and Sis­ak, while INA’s region­al retail net­work con­sists of 500 retail sites in Croa­tia and the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. INA Group is a mem­ber of MOL Group. Source: Clariant