First Dutch workshop on Biorefinery for the industry

Friday 16 June 2006

Hotel "de Wageningse Berg", Wageningen, The Netherlands

Biorefining refers to fractionating biomass into various separated products that possibly undergo a further biological, (bio)chemical, physical and/or thermal chemical processing and separation. By means of co-producing relatively (high) value chemicals (e.g. fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, polymers) the production costs of secondary energy carriers (e.g. transport fuels, heat, power) potentially could become market competitive, especially when biorefining is integrated into the existing chemical, material and power industries.

A close cooperation of different participants with a broad variety of disciplines within the recently formed Dutch Network on Biorefinery – Biorefinery.nl – will enable research, development, demonstration and implementation of innovative biorefinery concepts. The founders of the Biorefinery.nl initiative – Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) and the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands  (ECN) – therefore organised the first workshop on the possibilities of biorefinery concepts, held on June the 16th at hotel “de Wageningse Berg” in Wageningen.

This first-of-a-kind workshop provided a forum for a technical review of state-of-the-art research leading to the development of biorefinery technologies. Furthermore, different industries came together and addressed common as well as conflicting technical and market issues with regards to biorefinery opportunities for the agro & food industry,  the chemical industry and  the energy sector.

The programme of the workshop can be downloaded here. The presentations are available in PDF format. Official minutes can be downloaded here.

  1. Welcome (Johan Sanders, WUR)
  2. Biorefineries - International status quo and future directions (Ed de Jong, WUR)
  3. Strategy for the Netherlands (René van Ree, ECN)
  4. Opportunities for the food industry (Rob van Haren, AVEBE)   (in Dutch)
  5. Opportunities for the energy sector (Robert de Kler, NUON)
  6. Opportunities for the chemical industry (Wolter Prins, BTG)
  7. WS session primary products (Annita Westenbroek, VNP)
  8. WS session chemicals (Peter Nossin, DSM)
  9. WS session power production (Wim Willeboer, Essent)
  10. Theses (Biorefinery.nl)   (in Dutch)
  11. Closing session (Johan Sanders, WUR)   (in Dutch)
  12. Official minutes