Farm2Furan: Surplus agricultural feedstocks to furanics

A sustainable bioeconomy will require resource-effective utilization of locally available biomass sources as industrial feedstocks, and development of cost-effective, green technologies for their valorization with minimal impact on food availability and environment. Farm2Furan is a project focused on developing a value chain for chemicals production as part of a future biorefinery based on surplus agricultural biomass streams in Sweden, i.e. wheat bran and -straw, oat hulls, beet sugar and - molasses. Our target products are 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) as a versatile platform chemical for chemical- and fuel industries, and some of its derivatives for use as building blocks for plastics and -surface coating applications. We will study security of the feedstock supply, and impact of the national and EU policies and regulatory frameworks, and climate impact in relation to present utilization modes. Novel methods for extraction and separation of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin to enable selective valorization of these components will be developed. An important part of the project will be the development of an integrated chemo-enzymatic process technology for transformation of the cellulose fraction of cereal by-products and beet sucrose to HMF. The HMF will then be converted to building block chemicals, for evaluation by the stakeholders. Techno-economic evaluation of the entire value chain in a model biorefinery will also be performed.