***NEWS!  You are kindly invited to attend the free, joint workshop in Brussels, December 13, 2011 "Innovative uses for glycerol from the biodiesel process" hosted by the SUPERMETHANOL, PROPANERGY and GLYFINERY projects.  Further information and the registration form can be found here.***

Sustainable and integrated production of liquid biofuels, green chemicals and bioenergy from glycerol in biorefineries.

The EU target to increase the use of renewable energy carriers in the transportation sector in the coming years has already started to boost the production of biodiesel from rapeseed and other vegetable oils. This is leading to an immense increase in the production of glycerol, which is an unavoidable by-product from the esterification process. Since the volume of the glycerol-byproduct has already started to exceed the current market need, biodiesel producers are requesting new methods for sustainable glycerol management. The GLYFINERY project is targeted to development of a novel technology based on biological conversion of the glycerol by-product into known and new advanced liquid biofuels, bioenergy and valuable biochemicals in an integrated biorefinery concept. Implementation of the glycerol bioprocessing line into the biodiesel plant will improve the economics of the biodiesel biorefinery through enhanced energy conversion efficiency of the traditional raw materials and by generating high value bioproducts. The GLYFINERY project will achieve the aim of the highly efficient process scheme through a multidirectional effort using new biocatalysts tailored by genetic modification for specific conversion routes, highly efficient fermentation processes for maximum possible conversion of glycerol into the target products, highly efficient methods for product recovery and the overall process integration. The individual processes are proposed to be studied in the lab-scale, and the most promising process scheme will be tested in the pilot-scale as an integrated concept for demonstration of the suitability of the GLYFINERY concept and for implementation into large-scale biorefineries. An environmental and economical assessment will be performed along with a technological assessment in order to obtain an overall, integrated assessment of the optimized multi-stage process.

The project is funded through the European Community’s 7th Framework Research Programme.

Thank you for your interest in our project, if you would like to hear more or check on our progress you are welcome to follow our news and results here or contact us directly using the link above.