Sustainable Routes to Green Aromatics

Actions to mitigate the climate change would require rapid transformation of critical value chains in energy, transportation and chemicals sectors, and will take place via development and implementation of sustainable fossil-free technologies, e.g. organic chemicals and polymers are produced today almost fully from fossil crude oil. BTX aromatics are high volume chemicals currently produced in oil refineries and petrochemical plants from fossil streams. Sustainable, low carbon paths to chemicals, polymers and transportation fuels are thereby critically needed in order to secure supply of crucial materials of high demand and societal value. The target of this project is to secure Finland’s leading position in developing and exploiting innovative technologies for the conversion of abundant sustainable raw materials to sustainable green BTX aromatics.

GreenAro project will aim at developing catalytic pathways from green ra w materials (pyrolysis bio-oils and waste glycerol from biodiesel production) to valuable aromatic chemicals. These aromatics have versatile use in chemicals industry as intermediates for other chemicals and polymers and as solvents. More efficient catalysts will be developed to convert these raw materials with high selectivity to BTX aromatics. Proof-of-concept will be performed for both routes in laboratory scale and optimized process concept will be developed by modelling and simulations at least for one of the concepts. Techno-economics as well as further development and business opportunities after the project will be evaluated. The research project will be carried out by three research partners: VTT, Aalto University and Abo Akademi.

The project will establish a consortium with strong industrial representation throughout the value chain. Consortium companies are SMEs/Mid Cap companies: Green Fuel Nordic and Prefere Resins and large companies: Borealis, Neste and Valmet.