Mistra places a call to Peter Axegård, the former program director of KAM with STFI-Packforsk as program host. Nowadays we´ll find him as one of the managers at Innventia. A non-scientific search of what “Innventia" is provides one answer from Newsdesk: “INNVENTIA AB: Innovative experts come together under a new name as STFI-Packforsk becomes “Innventia." With the new name Innventia, the corporation emphasizes its role as an innovation partner with other companies and organizations."
What happened to the results from the research program KAM—wood chip leaching and the lignin extraction?
“Both have been tested on a full scale and now fit as pieces in the puzzle of wood-based bio-refineries," Says Peter Axegård.
He explains that there are several patents covering wood chip leaching and for the lignin extraction process. The wood chip leaching process, however, is still some time away from being commercially viable.
Södra Skogsägarna successfully conducted the processing tests.
“The chips leaching worked just as planned," says Karin Emilsson, technical director of the company.
The results showed metal being leached out in the expected quantity and this also positively affected the quality of the pulp. “But in the end we could not demonstrate that we saved enough money," explains Karin Emilsson.
Peter Axegård has gone on to demonstrate how chips leaching can be used to extract polymeric sugars from raw wood. It can for example be used as a surface modifier of pulp fiber and gas barriers.
Massive interest from all over the world
The extraction of lignin has been tested since 2006 at Bäckhammar, on a scale of several thousand tons per year. The process, named LignoBoost, has attracted lots of interest from all over the world.
"Metso Power bought the commercial rights to the LignoBoost process in 2008, but we are still free to work with different lignin applications. It is worth much more than biofuels to be able to produce chemicals and materials," says Peter Axegård.
The lignin is well suited to be mixed-in with pellets. The lignin is more energy dense and creates a more resistant pellet.
“Several pulp companies have shown great interest in investing on a full scale in LignoBoost facilities. Södra is the furthest advanced and have made their plans public," states Peter Axegård.
Carbon fiber is another area where lignin could be applied. Carbon fiber is a very light material that never rusts. It is used in, among other things, satellites and modern jumbo jets.
“The goal is to make lignin the new carbon fiber material for common products like wind turbines, hydrogen storage and car parts. Here lignin has great possibilities," says Peter Axegård who is a firm believer in the future for lignin in different applications.
This is how it started
The research program KAM was in operation between the years of 1996 and 2002. The purpose was to make pulp mills more resource effective by closing the pulp mills´ processes, to use all flows from the factory to make it more energy effective, and even produce more energy than needed in the production itself.
Several viable commercial ideas have been developed through the program, including techniques that were started to be used in the forestry industry while the program was still ongoing. KAM has demonstrated that you can produce high quality pulp and at the same time cut energy consumption, reduce toxic emissions and the impact on the environment.
When the program was terminated two of the program branches continued within FRAM — Framtida resursanpassad massafabrik (Custom resourced paper mills for the future) — that ran from 2002-2008.
One area that was researched within FRAM was wood chip leaching, meaning cleaning raw wood from non organic substances. The process makes it possible to use less water by removing substances like potassium and manganese from the chips. The connector could operate for a longer time and the recovery boiler was made more energy effective, at the same time as the bleaching became more environmental friendly. The chips leaching should be especially important to countries where there are water restrictions.
However, the process was questioned by industry experts who feared that pulp strength would be compromised by so called “acid hydrolysis" in the acid leachate (leach bath). All objections were proved to be incorrect.
The bind medium lignin creates clean bio fuels
The other area of FRAM that would look more closely at was to extract the bind medium lignin from the pulping process. Lignin, extracted from black lye, could substitute crude oil in the combustion processes and among other things be used as bind medium in pellets.
The pulp mills would not only become self sufficient in terms of energy usage, they could also become energy producers. Lignin, a very clean bio fuel, could in the long run even substitute for oil in residential boilers. One big advantage is that lignin can be stored and transported safely.
