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 effects and result

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.

Planned 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.