On 1 September a consortium of 14 European companies, including Elkem, announced that they will start a demonstration project for the conversion of woody biomass.
The EU-project is called BIOFOREVER, and it is Elkem’s Carbon division that is part of the project. A consortium of 14 European companies using EU funding under the Horizon 2020 program, is planning to demonstrate the conversion of woody biomass to value adding chemical building blocks. Elkem Carbon will focus on demonstrating the application of the chemicals as binders in their products.
The BIOFOREVER project intends to demonstrate the feasibility of various new value chains from lignocellulosic feedstocks to chemical building blocks like butanol, ethanol, 2, 5 – furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA) on an industrial scale.
Elkem has developed and is currently producing and supplying carbon materials with bio based binders. Knowledge and experience from this work will be used in this project to verify if different materials available from the bio refineries can be used as binders in carbon materials for the metallurgical industry.