‘Game-changer’ for advanced biofuels

Redcar-based Nova Pangaea Technologies converts unwanted plant biomass into natural platform chemicals and biofuels. Biofuels International spoke to Neil Hindle, its chief technology officer, about the company’s latest developments.
In 2021 so far what significant progress has been made with the REFNOVA technology?
Hindle: The critical change this year is that, where previously our process, REFNOVA, hydrolysed and separated the hemicellulose sugars first, followed by the cellulose sugars from the lignin.
We've now found, with our unique pyrolysis process (SARP – Steam Assisted Rapid Pyrolysis), that's not required if you are just requiring a mix of the sugars.
So, we can process the lignin cellulosic feedstocks directly through SARP and deliver a mixture of monomeric sugars plus a second product stream of lignin biochar. So, that enables us to remove a whole processing step which has a significant impact on the capital expenditure required for the whole process – that’s a real, breakthrough.
That's the most significant development this year but we have also seen progress with the biochar itself. We have been working in...