WoodZymes

The overarching of the WoodZymes project is to provide tailor-made extremozymes and extremozyme‐based processes that are new to wood bio-refineries. These will produce biomass‐derived chemicals that will provide alternatives to existing fossil‐based chemical building blocks. Specifically, the WoodZymes project will seek to:

• Develop extremozymes that are adapted to harsh industrial operation conditions using screening and protein engineering. This will be followed by pilot‐scale production for application in the wood conversion sector;
• Produce (assisted by extremozymes) and chemically characterise the lignin phenols and hemicellulosic sugars derived from underutilised side streams of hardwood and softwood kraft pulp mills;
• Develop new MDF and PU materials using enzymatic activation of lignin‐based resin precursors and phenolic polyols;
• Use hemicellulose sugars and sugar‐based amphiphilic polymers as papermaking additives.
• Evaluate the technical, environmental and socio-economic feasibility of the developed biotechnologies including market requirements, waste management, and LCA/LCC analyses

As well as its contribution to the overall BBI-JU goals and Key Performance Indicator, the WoodZymes project aims to make the following impacts:

• Create a new cross sectorial interconnection between the pulp and paper, enzyme technology, fibreboard, and PU products bio-economy sectors;
• Create a new bio-based value chain that valorises the side streams of the kraft pulp process;
• Increase the yield of lignin-derived phenols over existing depolymerisation processes using chemical catalysts and to extract hemicellulose sugars on a large scale from kraft pulp for the first time;
• Improve the competitiveness  and sustainability of fibreboard and PU foam manufacture by reducing the use of petroleum-based components
• Improve the efficiency of the kraft pulp process by valorising black liquor and by saving chlorine dioxide in pulp bleaching;
• Save energy during refining of paper thanks to the use of sugars extracted from pulp as fibre-bonding enhancers
• Reduce the use of resins in MDF thanks to new enzymatic technology
• Reduce the carbon footprint over the existing process

MetGen is a beneficiary of the WoodZymes project.

Extremozymes for wood-based building bio-products
12 November 2018
Take a look at our project WoodZymes whose aim is to supply timber and paper industries with special enzymes to produce wood-based building blocks such as board and insulation bio-products. Read more