BE-Basic Bioprocess Pilot Facility makes sustainable economy possible

Scaling up from laboratory to industrial scale presents a bottleneck when it comes to converting biobased residues such as agricultural waste into raw materials for building materials, chemical and pharmaceutical products and biofuels. The European Regional Development Fund, the Ministries of Agriculture, Nature & Food Quality and Economic Affairs, the Province of South Holland and the Municipalities of Rotterdam, Delft and The Hague, knowledge institutions and industry have planned a mutual investment of more than 100 million euros in a pilot facility in Delft. This will enable companies and knowledge institutions from all over the world to test whether their ideas can be scaled up, and if so, how.

Broad partnership

A facility of this kind is so complex and expensive that it can only be created in a broad partnership with support from government agencies. BE-Basic is taking the lead in the facility. BE-Basic is a consortium of universities, research organisations and industry that carries out research into the large-scale use of clean energy from biomass. TU Delft is the coordinating university for BE-Basic.

Unique in the world

Known as the ‘Bioprocess Pilot Facility’, it will enable problems that do not occur at laboratory scale but would need to be dealt with if they occurred on an industrial scale to be detected and solved. This is necessary to achieve a biobased economy, i.e. one based on the use of biomass instead of finite resources that cause pollution. The Delft pilot facility is the first of its kind in the world. Both its scale and its open nature make it unique. It makes the Netherlands – in particular the South Wing of the ‘Randstad’ western conurbation – a pioneer in the development of the biobased economy.

Flexible and multipurpose

The facility comprises separate modules. Users themselves select the process to be tested from the available modules, ranging from various methods of biomass pretreatment, fermentation, recycling and purification to
third-generation bioprocesses. As a result the pilot facility is flexible and geared to the needs of a wide variety of industries, large and small, from the chemical industry to equipment manufacturing. It is also a centre of expertise where students, researchers and technologists can be trained.

Note to editors

For more information on the Bioprocess Pilot Facility please contact:
Prof. Luuk van der Wielen, Director, BE-Basic
E-mail: l.a.m.vanderwielen@tudelft.nl
+31 (0)6 2280 2800