Production and obtention of bioproducts to boost mediterranean forest management within the context of a biorefinery

In the Mediterranean region there is a lack of forest management which results in a rise of forest fires. The present work, englobed inside the European project LIFE BIOREFFORMED, promotes an innovative strategy to boost forest management through the production of renewable value-added chemicals and biofuels, using a semiindustrial torrefaction and pyrolysis plant to produce bio-oil from wood. This study focuses on the production of biooil (BO) and posterior separation of sugars, acids, antioxidants and pyrolytic lignin (PL), to produce phenolic resins using wood to increase the end-value of the products and boost the forest value chain. Solvent extraction and column chromatography were used to separate the chemicals from bio-oil achieving the separation of BO into four different fractions: 1) PL which was characterized with FT-IR and converted into phenol-formaldehyde resins (PF), 2) Sugar and acid rich fraction, 3) Antioxidant fraction and 4) Aromatic hydrocarbon fraction. Those fractions were characterised with GC-MS.