Mark Lewis Opportunies for biorefining in the North East of England

Mark Lewis Technical Director of the North East Process Industries Cluster spoke about the opportunities for bioresources in the North East of England at the 1st ICIS Bioresources Summit.
How to integrate the process to make biofuels and create value out of the other streams.
Biorefineries will be large but limited by the ability to get biomas into it.They are likely to use high temperature and some flexible process. use all of the biomass to produce platform chemicals and some speciality grades.
They’re in Teeside, Humberside and North West England, as well as Grangemouth, Scotland. We should do it for energy security, climate change, to make new products and potentially reduce cost of production and to create wealth.
The North East of England is good because supply chains are developing for rape and other crops with North West biofuels, along with wood recycling, also a port for imports and exports as well as companies investing in biofuels. Good science base. Significant private investment from big firms. Biofuels Corporation has Europe’s largest biofuels plant 250 000 tonne/year and others also renewable energy.
Existing chains olefins, aromatics synthesis gas on Teeside, which is integrated.
Going to see an industry based on lignocellulosic fermentation and a chemicals industry within 20 years.
Eventually, new fuels, new energy sources, new feedstocks and possibly a new cluster producing chemicals from biomass.
Next? Work with chemicals and fuel companies as well as farming, food Regional Development Agencies and Universities.
They have set up a regional study and are proposing making liquids from biomass bio oil or torrefraction to make a char (I’ll find out what that process is) by 2020 1m tonne synthetic fuel and chem from 7m tonne biomasss about £1bn investment targeting aviation fuels.
The challenge is building the demand to do it to build a consortium, but having the vision gives us some hope of getting it.