Development of biopolymer to replace fossil raw material in plastics

Purpose and goal:

The forest is one of Sweden´s largest resources, but despite this, a large part of that forest is not used which is felled for purposes other than burning. In total, the studies show that approx. 80% of forests become short-lived products such as paper and biofuel. With this project, we want to increase the use of the 1/3 of the Swedish forest that is burned by producing a biopolymer of lignin from pulp mills and biorefineries.

In other words, an implementation would both increase the utilization of Sweden´s forests and at the same time reduce the plastic industry´s climate footprint. Expected results and effects:

This project will demonstrate the technology in an operational environment, but also develop the properties of the material. The project is currently in TRL6 where the technology is demonstrated in a relevant environment and first tests are also carried out in an operational environment. In this project, Lignin Industries together with three requirements owners will test the product in both a development environment and a production environment with the goal of being able to meet customer requirements in a production environment, TRL7.

Approach and implementation:

The plan for the project is to develop and test three different plastics (PE, PP and PVC) in parallel from pilot to production scale in order to finally have a finished product with a basis for decisions on implementation. Lignin Industries is responsible for the development of recipes and the evaluation of material properties, while a requirement owner per plastic type (Emballator, Trioworld and Thevinyl) is responsible for test production at both development scale and production scale.