Lignocellulosic Chemicals
Transforming Lignocellulosic site screening and waste into high-value chemicals and solvents
Lignocellulosic (2G) biomass is the cornerstone of the next-generation bioeconomy, but its processing often leaves valuable chemicals untapped or trapped in dilute aqueous streams. Sulzer delivers innovative, cost-effective, and energy-efficient solutions to recover and purify these compounds from challenging sources like black liquor or steam condensates. We empower producers to upgrade chemicals and solvents to turn a costly waste problem into a profitable revenue stream, driving circularity and commercial success.
Specialized recovery portfolio
Transforming Lignocellulosic Waste into High-Value Chemicals
The key to unlocking the value of 2G chemicals lies in efficiently extracting them from large volumes of water. We leverage our deep expertise in liquid-liquid extraction, combining it with our industry-leading technologies in evaporation, stripping, and fractional distillation. This powerful, integrated approach is specifically designed to capture and concentrate target chemicals from challenging streams, such as the building block chemicals from wastewater or from steam condensates generated in steam explosion plants.
Dual-Benefit: Profitability and Environmental Compliance
Our solutions are engineered to deliver two critical outcomes simultaneously.
Create a Revenue Stream: We purify the recovered compounds into technical or higher-grade saleable chemicals, enabling our customers to generate significant profit from a former waste stream.
Ensure Environmental Performance: The process effectively cleans the water, producing an effluent with low COD and BOD. This allows for safe discharge into the wastewater stream, ensuring you meet or exceed environmental regulations.
BioFlux™ Technology for Low-Carbon SAF and Renewable Diesel
Renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)
Sulzer delivers high-efficiency process technologies that enable producers to manufacture renewable diesel and SAF with low carbon intensity, high yields, and competitive economics. The Sulzer BioFlux process can transforms biobased fats, oils and greases including tall oil, used cooking oil (UCO), animal tallow, and distillers corn oil (DCO) - into premium sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
Your Partner for a Profitable 2G Biorefinery
Sulzer’s tailored process solutions are built on a foundation of process innovation and robust, proprietary equipment. We partner with producers of wood-based and 2G chemicals to design and implement systems that are not only highly effective but also energy-efficient, minimizing operational costs. Let us help you transform an environmental liability into a valuable asset and secure a competitive advantage in the growing market for lignocellulosic chemicals.
HMF (5-Hydroxymethylfurfural)
As a key "platform molecule," 5-HMF is essential for bio-plastics and fine chemicals. Sulzer utilizes specialized extraction and low-temperature EvapCare™ evaporation to recover 5-HMF from acidic aqueous phases, preventing thermal degradation and ensuring high chemical stability.
Furfural Recovery
Commonly found in steam condensates from steam explosion plants, Furfural is a high-demand solvent and chemical intermediate. We utilize OptimEXT™ Liquid-Liquid Extraction or advanced PEMFlux™ Steam Stripping combined with Azeotropic Distillation to break water-furfural bonds, delivering technical-grade purity for the global market.
Acetic Acid Concentration
Biomass pretreatment often generates significant Acetic Acid, which contributes to high COD levels. We leverage OptimEXT™ Liquid-Liquid Extraction with proprietary solvents to "wash" the acid out of the water, followed by DistilCare™ fractional distillation to reach high-purity specifications.
Methanol
Various methods can be applied to purify the methanol to Grade AA specifications. Typically, we use advanced DistilCare™ distillation and rectification to achieve the desired specification. For special challenging contaminants such as sulfuric molecules our OptimEXT™ Liquid-Liquid Extraction offers an effective process to remove those contaminants. This allows for direct circular reuse.
Levulinic Acid
Biomass conversion produces dilute streams of levulinic acid that are energy-intensive to separate. We use OptimEXT™ Liquid-Liquid Extraction to wash the acid from the water, followed by DistilCare™ vacuum distillation. This ensures high-purity recovery without thermal degradation while minimizing energy consumption.
Glycerol
Crude glycerol from biodiesel contains methanol, water, salts, and fatty matter. Sulzer provides Glycerin Drying, Glycerin–Fatty Matter Separation, and Glycerin Refining to USP grade, using advanced evaporation and distillation to upgrade crude glycerol into a high‑value product.
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Pulp mills and biorefineries
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Separation and purification solutions for pulp mills and biorefineries
Overview
Traditional lignocellulose conversion methods such as pulping, pretreatment, and steam explosion, break down this biomass and inevitably generate condensates, side and waste streams containing valuable chemicals.
Sulzer Chemtech offers industrially proven process solutions to recover these by products, transforming them into high-value biobased chemicals and biofuels, while also reclaiming water.
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Contact an expert
Contact our technical specialist for more information about separation and purification of lignocellulosic fuels and chemicals
Dr. Kai Joedicke
Director Key Accounts and Regional Sales
"Lignocellulosic processes offer tremendous possibilities to produce chemicals and fuels. Sulzer Chemtech offers leading separation and purification technologies amending existing processes. I am excited to identify and develop opportunities in this field."
Discuss Your Process Specifics
Our solutions for lignocellulosic industry
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Explore some of our references for lignocellulosic industry
Scandinavia
Enabling large‑scale biomethanol production through advanced extraction technology
Challenge:
Our customer needed to purify raw biomethanol stream from a pulp mill at the world’s largest biomethanol plant, ensuring removal of impurities to meet strict Grade AA quality standards.
Solution:
Sulzer provided high performance separation technology integrated into the licensors biomethanol purification concept, including OptimEXT liquid-liquid extraction technology, key mass transfer components and a range of Sulzer process pumps to ensure robust, reliable plant operation.
Technology:
OptimEXT™
Results:
Sulzer equipment enabled the annual production of 12,000 tons of high purity biomethanol, which unlocked new value streams from pulp mill waste, supported circular production practices, and strengthened a long standing collaboration between our customer, the process licensor and Sulzer.
Scandinavia
Recovery and upgrading of bio-chemicals from biomass pellet production
Challenge:
Our customer needed an energy efficient system to recover the valuable by-products particularly furfural from a condensate generated during biomass pellet production.
Solution:
Sulzer supplied a highly efficient separation unit using advanced distillation technologies engineered for minimal energy consumption and maximum product purity. The process design included extensive heat integration and a modular, fully equipped skid arriving ready for immediate operation.
Technology:
PEMFlux™, DistilCare™
Results:
Our solution enabled the recovery of high purity methanol for on site energy generation and in specification furfural for downstream applications. It, boosted overall sustainability of the pellet production and reduced energy use. Our customer proudly announced the operational efficiency of the unit and Sulzer`s ability for reliable delivery, fast installation and startup.
Southern Europe
Transforming a wastewater stream into profitable products
Challenge:
A cellulose producer needed to reduce the environmental impact of wastewater containing highly diluted acetic acid and furfural, while converting these byproducts into valuable resources for resale.
Solution:
Sulzer delivered a complete modularized process plant with a customized world-scale OptimEXT™ liquid–liquid extraction column to remove the chemicals from wastewater. Downstream of the extraction column, the chemicals were further separated and purified. The process was fully validated through extensive pilot testing at Sulzer’s Allschwil facility, enabling guaranteed performance.
Technology:
OptimEXT™, DistilCare™
Results:
Successfully recovered high-purity acetic acid and furfural from wastewater, significantly improving environmental performance while creating a new revenue stream with bio-chemicals.
Our separation portfolio is engineered to recover a wide range of platform chemicals, including:
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Methanol: experience in recovery & purification of methanol in petrochemical, biodiesel plants.
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Acetic acid: experience in LLE, distillation for acetic acid purification.
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Vanillin: experience in purification of vanillin from made from eugenol feedstock.
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Pinene: experience in fractionating different pinenes.
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Glycerol: several key equipment and skid projects. Furthermore column internals with in Asia.
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Organic acids & fatty acids: experience in fatty acids distillation & fractionation in Southeast Asia.
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Scale-up risk is a major hurdle in green chemistry. Sulzer mitigates this through a three-step approach:
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Feasibility Studies: Evaluating thermodynamics and chemical equilibria.
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Pilot Testing: Conducting trials at our global test centers to validate performance.
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Modular Skids: Delivering performance-guaranteed, pre-assembled process units that reduce on-site installation time and risk.
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To support Net-Zero goals, we offer VoltaSplit™ technology, which integrates Mechanical Vapor Recompression (MVR). This allows the electrification of evaporation and distillation trains, replacing traditional fossil-fueled steam with high-efficiency heat pumps, significantly reducing the carbon intensity of the bio-chemical production.
Yes. During pretreatment, inhibitors such as furfural, HMF, and acetic acid are often formed, which can hinder downstream fermentation. We provide high-efficiency stripping and OptimEXT™ liquid-liquid extraction systems to selectively remove these impurities, ensuring a high-purity sugar syrup (C5/C6) suitable for the production of ethanol or bio-based organic acids.
150+ Years Experience
Proven track record in chemical process engineering and equipment manufacturing.
Global Presence
Worldwide support network with local expertise and rapid response capabilities.
Quality Assurance
ISO certified processes and rigorous quality control for reliable, safe operations.