Whereas world capacity for biobased chemicals and materials is rapidly growing, Europe clearly lags behind. Lux Research, a Boston based company, expects a doubling of global biobased capacity in 2017 to 13.2 Mton. But Europe’s share will drop from 37% … Read more
Our industrial society exposes us to low doses of toxic substances. These are known to have health effects – but to what extent? For some time, air pollution and lung degradation have been a focus of debate; now researchers started … Read more
The paper and pulp industry calls it MIMO: Multiple Inputs, Multiple Outputs. In other words: biorefinery of various resources in order to produce multiple end products. Of which the paper and pulp sector would be just one of the clients, … Read more
Just five years ago, flying on bio jet fuel seemed an impossible dream. But SkyNRG developed a powerful concept that allows it to offer this product at an increasing number of airports. Its funding and co-creation model allows the company … Read more
As of today, the name of our website will be biobasedpress.eu. This is a better expression of who we are. Our twitter account was already called @biobasedpress. From now on, we will use this name in all our communications. Our … Read more
In this series, we discussed three design rules: reduce capital costs and create jobs, be lean on materials flows, and preserve structure. Our last guideline, elegance is beautiful, sums up the former three and enlarges them. Elegance in chemistry means … Read more
Petrochemical industry breaks down the feedstock into its simplest components, and subsequently starts piecing all ‘building blocks’ together in order to arrive at the required products. Biobased industry will never be able to compete if it follows this same logic. … Read more
“Cheap batteries will revolutionise the renewable energy market,” wrote ex-Secretary of State for the UK Chris Huhne past Sunday in the Guardian. For the supply of renewable energy it’s usually not stocks but flows that get the attention. For lack … Read more
The future is to biobased, says DSM’s Anton Robek. In 10-20 years’ time, virtually all of DSM’s feedstock will be biobased. The question now is not if, but how fast industry will get there. It needs to take a hurdle … Read more
A biobased industry should not copy petrochemical industry’s structure: that structure has been optimised for over a century, for this particular feedstock. In order to compete, the biobased industry should particularly be lean on materials flows: it should use all … Read more
One of the discussion themes in the corridors of the World Bio Markets conference in Amsterdam last week, was industry-government relationships. Major European biobased industries feel frustrated that they invest in other continents, whereas they received so much support from … Read more
Will biomass ever be able to compete across a broad range of products with fossil feedstock, that is so much easier to recover and has such excellent economies of scale? In his valedictory speech as professor in biomass valorisation, delivered … Read more