Demonstration of an IBLC inside the grain-milling and feed industry for the production of straw-based bio-commodities for the transport sector (bioethanol and bio-oil)

The agroindustry Lantmännen in Sweden will become an Integrated Biomass Logistics Centre (IBLC) in the grain-milling and feed sector.

Lantmännen integrates around 29.000 farmers working from August to October and delivering 1.2 Mt/year of grain to the plant to produce flour for food, animal feed and bioethanol. Apart from the grain, the Swedish farmers produce straw, which is partially harvested and used for feed or bedding. However, a significant part has no use today and is ploughed down into the soil.

Lantmännen will start a new business line based on the use of the cereal straw as a non-food feedstock in the current process of producing bioethanol, ensuring that the bioethanol plant is working throughout the year at its maximum capacity. The challenge will be to handle the by-product, a lignin rich residue that has a high value if refined into a product such as liquid fuel or bio-material. The profitability of the straw value chain will increase by producing both, ethanol and products of higher value from the lignin (Sulphur free bio-oil to be used as biodiesel enhancer). Another challenge will be to create a new logistics chain in order to deliver straw along the year, as straw is a seasonal resource.

The following outcomes are expected:

• To avoid seasonality.
• To valorise 80 kt/year of cereal straw that is currently unexploited and available in the surrounding regions in a radius of 100 km to be used for ethanol production.
• To open two new markets for the bio-oil and biochar production and commercialization.
• To create 25 new jobs.
• To reduce by 50 % the average payback period in equipment investments.
• To increase 15 % their economic activity.
• To assess socioeconomic and environmental issues related to the IBLC implementation