The Bioprocess Pilot Facility has performed scale-up trials for 2 academic projects within the BE-basic framework. The scale-up trails are performed in the Pretreatment and Hydrolysis department of BPF in which biomass valorisation is the main focus.

Bioprocess Pilot Facility has scaled up a pre-treatment and a hydrolysis process, as a partner in two BE-Basic projects together with TUDelft and other partners.

The first project is called “Scale up of enzymatic hydrolysis processes”.
The process consists of modelling the enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass. DSM’s proprietary enzymes were used and the enzymatic hydrolysis process was modelled by TUDelft with the goal of better understanding the scale up phenomena and better predict the scale up of enzymatic hydrolysis. With this project more insight into the sugar release and transport phenomenon during enzymatic hydrolysis is obtained. The partners in this project are: TU Delft, Viride, DSM and BPF.

The second project is called “High-pressure CO2 process for biomass pretreatment “.
The project studies biomass pretreatment via a high pressure process. In this project the production of acetic acid is targeted.
Woody biomass is taken and a thermal pretreatment is used for the parallel production of acetic acid and cellulosic sugars. The produced acetic acid from biomass will be used as a bulk chemical and being from a green source can be an added value. For the competitiveness of biorefinery concepts it is of high importance that all side products are valorised and thus contribute to a cost price of the cellulosic sugars. The partners in this project are: TU Delft, Nouryon and BPF. TUDelft analyses the results of the various process conditions that were used. Nouryon is a partner in this project as an end-user of the acetic acid. BPF performed the pretreatment using its 50-liter batch reactor.

Please find a more detailed description of “Scale up of enzymatic hydrolysis processes” here.
Please find a more detailed description of “High-pressure CO2 process for biomass pretreatment here.

Both projects are led by the Adrie Straathof Group within the Department of Bioprocess Engineering at the TU Delft.