Wilmar Osorio Viana

Title : Towards a circular economy with biorefineries: forestry waste biomass in Catalonia as innovation source

Abstract:

A successful circular economy will depend on the consolidation of an industry that will be able to manufacture high-tech/high-quality products that come from local renewable or waste biomass, and also capable to reach strategic markets worldwide. These products must be fine and platform chemicals, and advanced and smart materials, effective in replacing and surpassing current existing products. This work presents current status of NextGenerationEU project CEBIOREF, whose goal is the valorization of residual and low-value wood in the region of Catalonia (Spain), applying a cascade biorefinery approach to obtain high-performance adhesives, biopolymers and platform biochemicals. The conceptual design of the biorefinery include a lignin-first approach to get technical lignins, regenerated celluloses and fractionated lignocellulose with natural deep eutetic solvents and ionic liquids. The project’s multidisciplinary approach is outlined and relevant considerations for research/innovation, scale-up and industrial ecology with lignocellulosic biorefineries are discussed.

Audience Take Away

• The audience will get a critical perspective to biorefinery design
• Case study to biomass processing will be valuable to practitioners
• ​​​​​​​Multidisciplinary insights to circular economy for stakeholders and managers

Biography:

Dr. Osorio studied Chemical Engineering at the National University of Colombia and graduated as MSc in 2007. He then joined the research group of Prof. Gomez (PRISMA) and received his PhD degree in 2014 at the same institution. He is postdoctoral fellowship supervised by Prof. Villorbina at the DBA Laboratory, Catalonia (University of Lleida), working in the field of biomass valorization, particularly in the issues related to scale-up of chemical process from lab to pilot plant, installation, start-up and operation of pilot plants for biorefinery operations using green chemistry and process intensification strategies.