newsletter - january 2018 - Falcon Project

From waste to resource for a greener, biobased world

NEWSLETTER - JANUARY 2018 Welcome to the first FALCON newsletter and thank you for joining us! From now on we will publish a yearly newsletter with updates on the FALCON EU project. For more information, visit the FALCON website www.falcon-biorefinery.eu.

What is the EU FALCON project? FALCON is a project funded by the EU that aims at turning the lignin-rich industrial waste stream from second generation biofuel plants into higher value products, such as marine fuels, fuel additives and chemical building blocks. FALCON stands for “Fuel and chemicals from lignin through enzymatic and chemical conversion” Biofuels are a promising alternative to fossil fuels, one of the contributors to global warming. However, the use of crops to generate biofuels is under strong economic pressure. In addition, large amounts of waste are generated in biofuel production. But what if we could use this waste to make biofuel production more profitable and sustainable? The main component of this waste is lignin, the glue that holds plants and wood together. It is estimated that by 2050 biofuels will generate approximately 200 million tons of lignin. This offers tremendous opportunities for using it as a starting material for many products. However, at present most of this waste is burned to produce green energy (heat or electricity) for the biofuel plant. One challenge is to develop new technology to convert lignin into other valuable products. FALCON is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme to tackle this challenge. It aims to develop an environmentally friendly, low-energy demanding process to turn lignin waste into value-added bioproducts. Falcon will make use of enzymes from fungi and bacteria, which are excellent at breaking down plant fibers. Combining the power of enzymes with other innovative technologies, lignin waste will be turned into an oil that can be readily converted into: -

Marine fuel, a green alternative to conventional fuels currently used. Fuel additives to make road transportation more sustainable and more efficient. Chemical building blocks to produce bioplastics and other biobased materials. These new, sustainable products could replace fossil fuels and conventional plastics, as well as help bio refineries transition towards a “zero waste” production. Overall, the project will place lignin transformation at the heart of the economic and ecological viability of biofuels.

FALCON Newsletter No 1/ January 2018


2nd FALCON Meeting Italy The second FALCON Governing Board meeting took place in Baveno, at the Lago Maggiore in Italy from July 3 – 5 2017. The first day was reserved for the separate Workpackage meetings, whereas the Workpackage leaders gave summaries of these during the Governing Board meeting on the second day. The coordinator was content to notice that all Workpackages were on schedule. The meeting was finalized with a visit to the IBP plant where all partners were able to witness how lignin, the raw material for the project, is being produced.

Results from Workpackage 2 The activities and obtained results in WP2 – Laccase mining, production and characterization during the first year of FALCON have driven the work positively towards the set objectives and milestones. Both MetGen and KNAW have conducted extensive bioinformatics work for genome and library mining to screen potential laccase candidates to identify novel laccases applicable for lignin depolymerization. For laccase mining, MetGen has utilized its existing bacterial library and concentrated the search to the enzymes from thermophilic and alkaliphilic bacteria whereas KNAW has performed fungal genome mining for multicopper oxidases and conducted extensive phylogenetic analysis of fungal laccases. Based on the bioinformatics work, MetGen, KNAW an UH have started the cloning, production and biochemical characterization of selected laccase candidates in both bacterial (MetGen) and fungal platforms (KNAW and UH), i.e. Escherichia coli, Pichia pastoris and Aspergillus niger. In addition, UH has expressed two recombinant laccases from white-rot fungus Obba rivulosa (syn. Physisporinus rivulosus) in Pichia pastoris expression host and characterized their biochemical properties, including the effect of pH for the activity and thermotolerance. Towards the characterization of selected laccases with respect to lignin depolymerization, UH has already started testing fungal laccases from UH and laccases of bacterial origin from MetGen using non-phenolic lignin model compounds both in presence of different types of mediators and without any mediator. In addition, selected fungal laccases from UH showed promising results with respect to



solvent tolerance. MetGen also demonstrated the prolonged stability of selected bacterial laccases in presence of butanol (up to 10 vol%) in water solution. Related to characterization of laccases with respect to lignin depolymerization, UH has also started the synthesis of lignin model compounds. Monomers and defined dimeric and trimeric structures have been prepared to act as models for natural substrates and reference materials in studies with biocatalysts. In addition, MetGen has established lab-scale experimental set-up and protocols for twophase water/butanol system to study the butanol extraction strategy of depolymerized lignin.

Results from Workpackage 3 The activities and obtained results in WP3 – Process design and pilot for lowsulphur heavy fuel oil production during the first year of FALCON are developing positively towards the set objectives and milestones of the project. IBP provided all the respective partners of WP3 with the lignocellulosic materials for the lab tests. They optimized their process conditions with poplar tree as the starting material and lignin has been characterized in terms of residual sugars, klason lignin, ashes, other and moisture content. MetGen has initiated scale-up work for utilizing its ENZINE® technology platform for its in-house developed enzyme prototypes. The preferred production strain for the platform is Escherichia coli. MetGen provided two relevant laccases from their commercial bank with the potential for lignin depolymerization to UH and BBEPP. Lab protocols for purification of the industrial raw-lignin from IBP with 50% lignin content was optimised at UH and BBEPP. The raw-lignin was washed with water to remove salts and then purified by two separate methods. Both methods yielded purified lignin, that was analyzed by NMR, IR, pyrolysis GCMS and GPC. Towards the characterization of selected laccases with respect to lignin depolymerization, UH and BBEPP has already started testing fungal laccases from UH and laccases of bacterial origin from MetGen using non-phenolic lignin model compounds and purified lignin both in presence of different types of mediators and without any mediator. Related to depolymerization of lignin and purification of lignin oil, BBEPP has already started testing different solvents for the extraction and concentration of the lignin oil. In addition, MetGen has established lab-scale experimental set-up and protocols for two-phase water/butanol system to study the butanol extraction strategy of depolymerized lignin. Fuel specs for marine diesel and marine fuel reference samples were provided by Total for the development of refinery process towards lignin oil as marine fuel.



Results from Workpackage 4 During the first year of the FALCON project the groundwork laying tasks and activities regarding WP4 - Marine fuel and fuel additive applications of lignin crude oil have been commenced and progressed towards the envisioned objectives and milestones. In close cooperation with the entire FALCON project consortium, the project partners of WP4; Total, Winterthur Gas and Diesel Ltd. (WinGD) and Progression-Industry determined the desired Lignin Derived Fuel Oil (LDFO) properties and published these in a report. The herein listed LDFO specifications concern the most critical properties with respect to practical fuel applications. Similarly to the aforementioned (LDFO) requirements, the desired lignin-based fuel additive properties have been determined and published in a report. Based on pre-screening, this report recommends various candidates. For both reports, Total and WinGD contributed by collecting the specifications from international standards, internal and external reports, as well as from their colleagues working in the related industry. Additionally, the foundations have been laid for effectively collecting all relevant lignin- and LDFO sample properties, next to performing the first exploratory model component based fuel additive engine tests.

Results from Workpackage 5 The performed activities and obtained results in WP5 - Upgrading lignin crude oil to fuel additives (value chain 2) and chemical building blocks (value chain 3) during the first year are positively progressing towards the set objectives and milestones of the FALCON project. UH has subjected different types of lignin model compounds to chemical treatment to evaluate suitable reaction conditions for lignin cleavage and modification in order to convert the low-sulphur lignin-derived heavy fuel oil to fuel additives and mono-aromatic building blocks. Laccase-mediator oxidized lignin model compounds obtained in WP2 have also been tested, and promising results with respect to lignin depolymerization have been obtained. UH and KNAW have used literature and their in-house datasets to identify several candidate fungal and bacterial aromatic metabolic enzymes to be tested for bioconversion of the aromatic compounds extracted from the low-sulphur lignin-derived heavy fuel oil. The cloning and heterologous production of the selected candidate enzymes in bacterial and fungal production hosts have been started by UH



and KNAW. In addition, UH has produced the first recombinant fungal aromatic metabolic enzymes at small scale and started testing them on dimeric and polymeric lignin model compounds.

Results from Workpackage 6 The activities in WP6 – Economics and life cycle assessment during the first year of FALCON started in line with the planning of the project with two tasks. For benchmarking the performance of the innovative FALCON processes against conventional stateof-the-art products and their industrial production processes base cases have to be defined as reference. A short-list of suited conventional products, having a similar performance than the innovative biobased FALCON-products, has been compiled with the involvement of all project partners (see table below). The selection of particular convention products has not yet been finalised at this stage.

T ABLE : P OTENTIAL CONVENTIONAL PRODUCTS FOR

BENCHMARKING THE

B ENEFITS

OF

FALCON PRODUCTS

FALCON Value Chains

Commercial and conventional products as base case alternatives

VC1: Maritime Fuels

MGO, MDO,IFO, Residual Oil, Edible Oils, LNG, MeOH

VC2: Fuel Additives

Octane Booster, MTBE, ETBE, Ethanol

VC3: Chemicals

Aromatics, BTX, Styrene

To support the experimental technical work packages WP3 and WP4 as well as to provide data for the assessments in this workpackage ‘Computer Aided Process Engineering’ (CAPE) tools are foreseen. At partner SUPREN, the commercial software toolbox ‘AspenONE® Engineering Suite‘ is available for flowsheet modelling, simulation and optimization, while ‘umberto® NXT LCA’ in combination with the ECOINVENT database is available to perform environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). An alternative open source/access software tool has been tested and discussed by the partners SUPREN and TOTAL, namely the ‘Petroleum Refinery Life Cycle Inventory Model’ (PRELIM), a mass and energy based process unit-level tool to estimate energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with processing a variety of crude oils within a range of configurations in a refinery. This tool might get involved in the assessment of conventional marine fuels.



Agenda Next FALCON Governing Board meeting in Lyon February 6-8, 2018

The Consortium

Get in touch with FALCON www.falcon-biorefinery.eu [email protected] LinkedIn: FALCON-Biorefinery Twitter: @FALCON-H2020


