European Reseach Infrastructure for Circular Forest Economy
ERIFORE aims to establish an open access research infrastructure for circular forest bioeconomy across Europe. This will unlock the full potential of available forest biomass and will give rise to a new level of co-operation between the major RTD providers in the field.
To achieve this, the project will first assess: (1) The sources of forest derived biomass and their availability and (2) The existing expertise and equipment of the project partners on the processing steps to convert forest biomass into valuable end products.
The analysis of the collected data and special competences will allow the identification of possible value chains in the circular forest bioeconomy. Furthermore, the missing expertise and equipment to realize these value chains within the pan-European infrastructure will be identified. As such a globally competitive European research infrastructure can be established delivering next generation technologies in the field of paper to novel biomaterials, revisiting current pulping processes, and valorization of forest biomass gasification (e.g. gas fermentation).
Interregional concept studies will be extracted from the most relevant value chains, resulting in novel business models for the forest bioeconomy. A conceptual design and plan for cooperation arrangements will be prepared between the main European RTD providers with the target to establish an ESFRI project in the field of circular forest bioeconomy.
ERIFORE will enhance the cooperation between academia and industry through biorefinery clusters, thus enabling knowledge transfer and upgrading the bio-economy competence base.
ACTIVITIES of Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant
BBEPP plays a unique role in the ERIFORE project as it is a flexible and multipurpose pilot plant for process development, scale-up and custom manufacturing of biobased products and processes. Since it is an open-innovation pilot facility, it can catalyze high-level cooperation on forest bioeconomy by combining specific in-house knowledge and a wide variety of equipment for biomass pretreatment, fermentation, biocatalysis, green chemistry and downstream processing. This greatly accelerates and/or demonstrates various envisioned forestry based value chains.
BBEPP combines a large network of leading industrial players, emerging SMEs and RTDs with a vast experience in projects aimed at influencing policy at a regional, national and international level. This provides a good starting point and solid background for this infrastructure design action.
Interesting documents and links
PARTNERS
Teknologian tutkimuskeskus (VTT), Finland – Aalto Korkeakoulusaatio (Aalto), Finland – Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung (FhG), Germany – SP Sveriges Tekniska Forskningsinstitut AB (SP), Sweden – Kungliga tekniska högskolan (KTH), Sweden – SINTEF, Norway – Institut Technologique Foret Cellulose Bois-construction Ameublement (FCBA), France – Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), France – Tecnalia Research and Innovation (Tecnalia), Spain – Kompetenzzentrum Holz GmbH Wood K plus (Wood K plus), Austria – Latvijas Valsts Koksnes Ķīmijas Institūts (LSIWC), Latvia – “Petru Poni” Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (PPIMC), Roumania – Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant (BBEPP), Belgium
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