Nordic Wood Biorefinery Conference (NWBC) 2024

In June 2022, ground was broken for RISE’s new pilot hall in Örnsköldsvik, the heart of Bioeconomy Arena. With the arena, RISE supports industry and society to accelerate the development of new products and solutions based on sustainable origins. In the flexible pilot hall in Örnsköldsvik, as well as in operations around the country, companies will be able to test their innovations without starting from scratch. 

"The pilot hall in Örnsköldsvik will be a national node where operators in research and industry can meet and realise ideas about how biomass can be used for the greatest possible benefit. And when large companies with practicable residual streams meet growing tech companies with ideas about what can be done, completely new business clusters can emerge" says Magnus Hallberg.

In a joint keynote, Bertel Karlstedt, CEO and Tony Duncan, Co-founder of Circa Group AS will share how Circa Group’s journey started with an ambition to valorise waste biomass to produce more sustainable molecules for industrial applications. 

“The journey of over 15 years has been one of measured development – through five pilot plants, while testing markets with derivatives based on a patented process producing levoglucosenone. The route to the current position has been exciting, scary, frustrating and, ultimately, not one that we could have mapped out from the start. And Circa is certainly not at full vision yet. At NWBC 2024 we will give a frank overview of the challenges new companies have to bring products to commercialization”, says Bertel Karlstedt and Tony Duncan. 
 

In this presentation, we explore the historical roots of the industry located just minutes away from the event venue, tracing its origins in the early 1900s when chemicals first were crafted from bio-based raw materials.​ From this tradition, Sekab as a fossil-free challenger is pushing for change through relentless innovation and strategic collaborations. We aim to redefine supply chains and revolutionize sectors spanning cosmetics to automotive.

Unlike other energy-intensive industries, the chemical industry cannot be made fully sustainable directly with renewable power. Hence, a strategy for fossil free competitiveness must include a transition to green carbon feedstocks. Sekab has a long history of converting bio-based ethanol to competitive green chemical products and based on this, our presentation highlights challenges and key factors for a transition in the chemical industry, from fossil-based economy to bio-based economy, including availability of feedstock, market opportunities, political conditions, and price development.

Jason Hallet, Professor of Sustainable Chemical Technology, Imperial Colleague, will present VALUED´s journey to build our most important functional materials from bio-based resources. These materials will lower CO2 emissions, helping the world reach zero emissions by 2050 while boosting high-performance technologies and creating new industries. This will form the cornerstone for a modern technology-dependent economy.
 

“At NWBC 2024 we will give an overview of the research involved in VALUED and an in-depth look at our use of novel solvents to obtain bespoke precursors for advanced materials synthesis.”, says Jason Hallet