Stra­tegic part­ner­ship between Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant and nova-Institut

The devel­op­ment of products from sus­tain­able resources and pro­cesses too often fails to step out of the research labor­at­or­ies. From 15^th Janu­ary on, com­pan­ies and research insti­tutes can rely on the expert­ise of the nova-Insti­tute and the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant for the choice of feed­stock, the life cycle ana­lys­is of the nov­el product, a mar­ket­ing strategy, the devel­op­ment of a scal­able pro­cess, the pro­duc­tion of the first sample mater­i­al for applic­a­tion test­ing and the cus­tom man­u­fac­tur­ing of the first tonnes of product to enter the mar­ket. The nova-Insti­tute was foun­ded as a private and inde­pend­ent insti­tute in 1994. It is loc­ated in the Chem­ic­al Park Knap­sack in Hürth, which lies at the heart of the chem­ic­al industry around Cologne (Ger­many). For over 18 years now, the nova-Insti­tute has been glob­ally act­ive in feed­stock sup­ply, techno-eco­nom­ic eval­u­ation (TEE), mar­ket research, life cycle assess­ments (LCA), dis­sem­in­a­tion, pro­ject man­age­ment and policy advice for a sus­tain­able bio-based eco­nomy. Man­aging dir­ect­or Michael Carus: ​„Togeth­er we can sup­port biobased innov­a­tion from the lab scale to com­mer­cial scale and mar­kets. Techno-eco­nom­ic and envir­on­ment­al eval­u­ations are an invalu­able tool to steer pilot plant pro­cessing and optim­iz­a­tions.“ The Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is a flex­ible and diver­si­fied pilot plant for biobased products and pro­cesses based in Ghent, Bel­gi­um. It offers sup­port in devel­op­ment, optim­iz­a­tion and scale-up of new biopro­cesses, and cus­tom man­u­fac­tur­ing of biobased products at the kilo­gram to multi-tonne scale. The pilot plant is fully equipped to execute every aspect of the biopro­cess on a single loc­a­tion: from the bio­mass up to the final bioproduct. It has state of the art equip­ment to per­form biore­fin­ing oper­a­tions, fer­ment­a­tion, biocon­ver­sion, green chem­istry and up- and down­stream pro­cessing for product recov­ery and puri­fic­a­tion. The Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant is an ideal part­ner for open innov­a­tion. As an inde­pend­ent com­pany, it is access­ible to com­pan­ies and research insti­tutes from around the world for ser­vice pro­jects, stra­tegic col­lab­or­a­tions and pub­licly fun­ded pro­jects. Man­aging Dir­ect­or Wim Soetaert: ​“By join­ing forces with the nova-Insti­tute, our extens­ive expert­ise in biopro­cessing is now com­ple­men­ted with techno-eco­nom­ic and envir­on­ment­al ana­lys­is. That way, we can bet­ter serve our cus­tom­ers and bring open innov­a­tion into prac­tice.” Source: Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant