Parratt & Associates Scoping Biorefineries: Temperate Biomass Value Chains

5.5 Sources of Biomass for Biobased Products

Renewable chemicals can be derived from plant animal and marine sourced biomass. The following diagram illustrates the current sources of bio-feedstock for renewable chemicals.

Figure 5-3: Biofeedstock Utilization in Renewable Chemicals

Source: Global Renewable Chemicals Market by Market and Markets (2010)¹⁹⁵

Plant biomass accounts for about 55% of the total source whilst animal biomass consists of about 30%. Plant biomass comes from crop residues, dedicated renewable chemical/energy crops, and forest and wood processing residues. Animal biomass comes from animal fats and livestock and poultry waste. Recent developments in biotechnology have allowed for greater utilisation of animal biomass that contributing to reduce dependence on petrochemicals.

Figure 5-4: Sources of Renewable Chemicals

Source: Global Renewable Chemicals Market by Market and Markets (2010)¹⁹⁶

The projections for the increased use of plant based biomass for biobased products would suggest that this relative mix could change quickly. This would be especially true for the use of animal biomass, with the exception of that derived from intensive industries (e.g. pigs and poultry). With climate change impacts, population growth and increased desertification, animal protein and animal biomass from extensive agricultural systems will probably decrease most rapidly.

5.6 Biocatalysis and Chemical Catalysis Market

Catalysis is a key enabling technology for producing non-renewable chemicals and renewable chemicals. Biocatalysis is the use of natural catalysts such as enzymes and proteins to execute chemical transformations. In addition to enzymes and proteins, micro-organism manipulation can be considered a form of engineered catalysis. Four key players in the international market are Dyadic International, DSM, Novozyme and Genencor International.

Growth in the renewable chemical market tracks the related to biocatalysis and chemical catalysis market. The biocatalysis market is expected to achieve a CAGR of 10.4% due to the growing popularity for production of renewable chemicals using catalysts on biological pathways that offer advantages of high specificity and selectivity.

Chemical catalysis market growth in the renewable sector is being driven by increased use of recyclable solid catalysts. The growth forecast is 9.8% CAGR and the growth market is in the field of polymers from renewable materials.

Overall catalysis processes and outputs would be improved with:

• 
  more efficient heterogeneous catalysis
  
• 
  catalysts capable of operating efficiently at low temperatures and low pressures;
  
• 
  increased recyclability.
  

Future industry growth will depend on innovations in both enzyme-driven reactions and chemical acid base catalysed reactions.

Figure 5-5: Growing Market for Biocatalysis

Source: Global Renewable Chemicals Market by Market and Markets (2010)¹⁹⁷

5.7 Domestic Industrial Biobased products Manufacturers and Market Conditions

Australian domestic opportunities can be largely categorised by the volume to value curve below in Figure 5-6. To date, domestic activity in bioproducts (i.e. not including bio-energy) has been largely in the area of “functionally equivalent” products or the introduction of products designed to perform in a “functionally equivalent” manner to their petrochemical competitors. This is in contrast to “molecular equivalent” products that would be introduced from biobased sources – i.e. a polymer or product “molecularly identical”, and hence functionally identical to its petrochemical competitor.

By moving along the value and volume curve for various product entities, the model biorefinery will capture different markets. As can be seen, the creation of bio-ethanol is a ‘functional equivalent’ of petrol and is a commodity requiring high volumes, low costs and small margins per unit. A specialist biobased product – e.g. novel bioactives from plant metabolites would be considered high-value low volume biobased products.

Figure 5-6: Chemicals and Plastics and the global (re) emergence of an integrated biobased economy.

Begley et at, PACIA conference, June 2009¹⁹⁸

At this time, there has been limited domestic manufacturing uptake of industrial biobased products and arguably, the most significant domestic player is Plantic Technologies – a functionally equivalent product offering - who have developed a starch-based polymer system for food packaging applications. There are a range of other biobased polymer packaging companies that are tabled in “Biobased Products: opportunities of Australian Agricultural Industries”¹⁹⁹.

Three recent reports on furans, phenols, cellulose and essential oils provide an indication of the scale of the opportunity within Australia^200,,. In 2009 Proserpine Sugar Mills announced that a third of the mill’s bagasse would be devoted to the production of 5000 T/yr of the chemical, furfural. A market potential of $1250/T p.a. has been the focus of the development. Though the $35M plant was to have been completed in late 2009, and rescheduled production is to begin in June 2010²⁰¹, there are no indications that production has yet begun. The work of David Butt²⁰² and others suggest furfural could be derived from forestry and other temperate lignocellulose. Furfural has a number of end products. For example furfural can be used in the manufacture of plastics, food flavouring, furfural alcohol; paint and golf balls; as a nematicide; to blend with ethanol to enabling it to dissolve in dieseline to produce Ecodiesel.

The target platform chemicals listed in Tables 5.1 and 5.2 could be produced from biomass in Australia, either temperate or tropical. For example currently in excess of 1MT of polypropylene and polyethylene are utilised in Australia annually. The challenge is linking the production to the global supply chains. Discussions with representatives from PACIA suggest that the concentration of chemical industry in multi-national hands (excluding the fertiliser and explosive companies) within Australia limits the ability to undertake research and to deliver product substitution. R&D expenditure in the Australian chemical industry is low by international comparisons. Data is relatively hard to access on the chemical industry priorities and product development. Upstill and others in 2001²⁰³ suggest that most of the chemical industry R&D has been focussed on high value added low volume speciality chemicals (including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and nanotechnology products). The growth of interest in renewable chemicals has stimulated considerable new R&D activities applied to the more ‘mature’ chemical product markets.

Beyond these (first tier) manufacturers, it is likely that processors of imported polymers in the automotive and packaging segments are producing manufactured products for the domestic market.

The opportunities for biofuels production from lignocellulose in Australia have been considered in some detail by Warden and Haritos (2008)²⁰⁴ and are not the focus of this report. However, the uptake of biofuels is currently the major driver of biorefinery development globally and appears to be the sole driver in Australia. At present all biofuels production in Australia is based on first generation biorefineries. In Chapter 3 of this report, we detailed the potential scale of production from biomass to fuels.

Investment in lignocellulosic biofuels R&D is currently underway though only in modest amounts. Most are supported by grants from the Federal Government through its Second Generation Biofuels program. There is also some early stage commercial interest in lignocellulosic biofuels. In Chapter 4 provides information on pilot-scale, development scale and planned commercial biorefineries under construction internationally.