Denmark’s Demo Site
Green Biorefinery
In 2019, Aarhus University (AU) in Denmark opened a world-leading green biorefinery demonstration platform located at the AU Viborg campus and in the center of agricultural research and innovation.
It’s run by the Green Biorefining Technologies (GBT) Group from Aarhus’ Department of Biological and Chemical Engineering, with activities primarily focused on processing and testing agricultural and marine biomasses, which are then transformed into biobased products – including food, feed, materials, chemicals, fuels and energy.
The goal of the platform is to conduct groundbreaking R&D in an industrial relevant scale including the entire value chain, from primary production, harvest and logistics, to biorefining, product applications and circularity on one site. Their mission is to lead an international green transition in agriculture and food production, powered innovation and research activities in collaboration with academia and industry.
Main areas of work
Field management and feedstock logistics optimisation
Designing and testing timely, efficient and cost-effective local supply chains for small-scale green biorefineries, developing a Smart Biomass Supply Chain (SBSC) tool paired with ICT technologies. This approach will help farmers to improve their decision-making for harvesting, predicting, scheduling and biomass supply chain planning for all seasons.
Development of a novel biorefinery model
Including decentralized wet fractionation, transport of green juice and centralized protein separation and downstream processing. This model aims to reduce feedstock logistics costs by reducing transport of the raw fresh biomass and gain economy of scale in the energy demanding processes of the green biorefinery (heating, drying and product packaging).
Optimise the green biorefinery technology and value chain
For increased yields and consistent high quality. Maximum extraction of plant proteins for food and feed will not only benefit the protein valorisation, but also produce a press cake fiber with less protein making it better for biomaterials (e.g. packaging).
Investigate multi feedstock utilization
To increase the feedstock flexibility and expand the seasonal feedstock availability. This includes both expanding the amount of fresh plant materials that can be biorefined and the use of silage that can support a continued feedstock availability outside of the growth season.
Involvement across various Work Packages in Rural BioReFarmeries
Producing fiber press cake for WP3 (Bio-based Fibre and Packaging Development and Validation) and liquid residue / brown juice for WP4 (Production of Fatty Acids, Biogas and Nutrients from Brown Juice), and developing processing technology for producing functional protein isolates for WP5 (High Value Food, Flavours and Antimicrobials Development and Validation).