DEVELOPMENT OF A PROCESS FOR SEPARATING VALUE-ADDED COMPOUNDS FROM PINE WOOD BIO-OIL AS A PRELIMINARY STEP TO A BIOREFINERY

People’s increasing awareness of climate change and its impacts has given rise to several alternatives for obtaining energy and feedstocks from renewable sources. One promising alternative is bio-oil, a liquid derived from biomass pyrolysis, which can be used not only as a fuel but also as a feedstock for fine chemicals. On the other hand, in Europe there is a big stock of renewable carbon in forest areas which is increasing year by year due to lack of economic profitability and rural depopulation, which results in a lack of forest management and a rise of forest fires. In the present work, developed within the European Project LIFE BIOREFFORMED, an innovative strategy to boost forest management through the production of renewable chemicals is proposed, using a pyrolysis plant to produce bio-oil from wood. This bio-oil is then used as a source of value-added chemicals which can be isolated with biorefinery techniques.