MEDIA ALERT
Commercialising the biorefinery concept
A key principle of the Scottish Government’s desire to embrace a more circular economy is the
broad application of Industrial Biotechnology (IB). The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre
(IBioIC) is a specialist in the IB sector, a unique facility for the promotion of biological substances,
systems and processes to produce chemicals, materials and energy; making it well-placed to enable
delivery of the Government’s vision.
IB application drives Scotland’s ‘Biorefinery roadmap’ specifically via the development and
realisation of a number of biorefineries across the country. Although it has close to 100 years of
history, Grangemouth will not be the blueprint upon which this technology is built. Circular economy
values will encourage us to utilise all these “waste” streams with the least intervention possible and
only release the carbon by combustion as the final option. The biorefinery concept embraces this
standard by extracting the greatest value from organic feedstocks where fuel and energy make up
part of a portfolio of “products”.
At All Energy 2016, UK's premier event for renewable energy and sustainable technologies
conference, IBioIC’s Business Development Manager, Dr Paul Hudman argues that the biorefinery
concept doesn’t work unless you valorise everything - an integrated approach is the best way to do
this and IBioIC is working on several relevant projects practicing this principle. IBioIC is working on
this principle with GSK through a project to generate fermentable sugars from locally available waste
streams. Whether this is timber waste from nearby forestry operations or paper waste from local
mills the common theme is that it all contains cellulose, a sugar polymer ubiquitous in plants. This
sugar will be used to replace food based glucose in GSK’s process with the remaining plant material
being burnt to produce heat and electricity for the site.
Although this example sits in the central belt of Scotland, “stranded” resources should be unlocked
with local solutions such as local low carbon demonstrator projects, which show a local energy
economy approach, linking local energy generation to local energy use. In this area, IBioIC is
supporting Xanthella, a small industrial design company that is working on producing systems to
grow microalgae. They are championing the use of algae as a new high value industry for remote and
rural areas by using cheap renewable energy to power the photobioreactors that are used to grow
the algae.
The ASLEE (Algal Solutions for a Local Energy Economy) project will look at the technical and
economic viability of creating a predictable demand for renewable electricity through manufacturing
in remote and rural areas, producing a sustainable competitive advantage. The project will also
investigate how biomanufacturing can allow more deployment of renewables in these areas thus
improving the local economy. The aims of much biomanufacturing are high value, low volume
products and scalability and fit with local resources. The growth of algae matches these