At Fraunhofer CBP, the provision of infrastructure, testing facilities and pilot plants enables the development and scaling of processes and promotes their design in industry-relevant processes. With the existing plant equipment, individual process steps of alternative rapeseed processing can be mapped on a pilot scale. The centre provides modular process capacities of up to 10 m³ for biotechnological and chemical conversions as well as a wide range of processing technologies. With this flexible biorefinery concept, raw materials such as vegetable oils, cellulose, starch or sugar can be processed and converted into chemical products.
In the proposed project, CBP will above all contribute its expertise in the processing and separation of material flows of renewable raw materials. In addition to the development and optimization of individual process steps on a laboratory scale, this includes scaling in testing facilities and pilot plants as well as the integration of various individual processes into an overall process. During development, processes can be optimized, energetically considered and balanced by theoretical considerations and process simulation. Offline and online analysis methods such as GC (gas chromatography), HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography), MS (mass spectrometry) or GPC (gel permeation chromatography) are available for product evaluation and validation.
Examples are the transfer of syntheses based on vegetable oils in the joint project “Integrated Bioproduction Phase 2” (FNR Promotional reference: 22010112), the piloting of the fractionation of lignocellulose and the material use of the components in the joint project “Lignocellulose Biorefinery” (FNR Promotional reference: 22019209) and “Biomass Digestion” (BMBF Promotional reference: 031A069 D), the scale-up of a reprocessing process for the isolation of phytosterols from tall resin soaps in the joint project “PhytoZell” (BMBF Promotional reference: 031A073A), the process development for obtaining valuable substances from the torrefication of lignocellulose-containing biomass in the EU SteamBio project (EU Horizon 2020 Promotional reference: 636865) and the aforementioned joint project “Development of digestion processes for obtaining high-quality products from rapeseed – rapeseed exclusion” (I-Bank Sachsen-Anhalt Promotional reference: 1304/00101) [44] [45] [46][47]. The existing plant technology includes, among other things, a pilot plant for the digestion and fractionation of lignocellulose for the material use of the components cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin, the use of which can be considered for the scaling of rapeseed shell processing. Further testing facilities and pilot plants are available at CBP for questions of mechanical process engineering, such as homogenizers, various separators and plants for filtration and membrane filtration for the separation of biomass. Evaporator and distillation units for processing under atmospheric pressure and in vacuum up to 350°C with capacities of 1 l/h to 80 l/h as well as extraction plants for liquid-liquid extraction under atmospheric conditions and under high pressure with liquid propane and supercritical carbon dioxide enable the application of thermal separation processes for the separation of oil and valuable substance phases as well as for the recovery of ethanol.