The EU targets at replacing 10% of all transport fossil fuels with biofuels by 2020 to reduce the dependence on petroleum through the use of nationally, regionally or locally produced biofuels, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, the EU is concerned with the questionable sustainability of the conventional biofuels and the unattractive production costs of second and third generation biofuels. The BioMates project aspires to contribute to the drastic increase of non-food/feed biomass utilisation for the production of greener transportation fuels via an effective and sustainable new production pathway. The project will validate the proposed innovative technology which has the potential of over 49 million tons CO2-eq savings, at least 7% crude oil imports reduction which corresponds to over 7 billion € savings for EU, while indicating its socio-economic, environmental and health expected benefits. The main premise of the BioMates project is the cost-effective and decentralized valorization of residual (straw) and nonfood (Miscanthus) biomass for the production of bio-based products of over 99% bioenergy content. The bio-based products’ targeted market is the EU refining sector, utilizing them as a bio-based co-feed of reliable, standardizable properties for underlying conversion units, yielding high bio-content hybrid fuels which are compatible with conventional combustion systems. The BioMates approach is based on innovative non-food/feed biomass conversion technologies, including ablative fast pyrolysis and mild catalytic hydrotreating, while incorporating state-of-the-art renewable H2-production technology as well as optimal energy integration. The proposed pathway for decarbonizing the transportation fuels will be demonstrated via TRL5 units, allowing the development of an integrated, sustainability-driven business case encompassing commercial and social exploitation strategy.

The transport sector is dominated by the use of fossil fuels, and alternative fuels represent currently only 5% of fuel consumption in EU. The EU objective for the share of renewable energy in the transport sector is 10% in 2020. To achieve this goal, new advanced biofuels are needed and must be produced from alternative feedstocks. The Pulp&Fuel concept is to develop a simple and robust fuel synthesis process taking advantage of the synergy between super critical water gasification (wet gasification) and fixed bed gasification (dry gasification). For the Pulp&Fuel project, we have chosen to study the integration of the full process on a pulp mill. The developed process will take advantage of low to negative value wet and dry resources on a paper mill to add value to the overall process. The yield of biofuels will be significantly increased to 28 % compared to a classic approach that would only yield 18 %. The Pulp&Fuel final objective is to produce biofuels below 1 €/L without having a negative impact on the existing operations of the pulp mill. To achieve these goals a team of 10 partners, leaders in their field, from 4 EU-member states, will join efforts. To this end, we have defined five ambitious specific objectives: - Improve the efficiency of the dry gasification process from 70 to 80 % - Improve the carbon conversion of the wet gasification process to above 90 % - Improve fuel synthesis to obtain carbon efficiencies above 50 % (state of the art 45%) - Integration of the full process and synergy between dry and wet gasification - Integrated assessments will show that biofuels can be produced below 1 €/L Related work packages, tasks, milestones and risks are considered in order to achieve these objectives. The Pulp&Fuel project addresses the topic “liquid diesel- and gasoline-like biofuels from biogenic residues and wastes through either chemical, biochemical and thermochemical pathways, or a combination of them” of the LC-SC3-RES-21-2018 call.