Pulp Mill: A Natural Home for the Forest Product Biorefinery

It is costly to start a greenfield biorefinery plant. When we closely look at pulp and paper industry, it will not hard to find:

• this industry is the largest handler of forest residues (lignocellusics)
• $Millions investment has been completed in infrastructure, which will allow to save ~ 35% of capital cost versus a greenfield plant and utilize the boiler house, generators, control rooms, pipe bridges, water and effluent stations, warehouses, woodyards, wood procurement, storage tanks etc
• Hundreds of highly trained technical professionals are available for cellulosic biorefineries
• Co-production and process integration reduce allocated production cost for both pulp mill and biorefinery plant
• Bioethanol adds additional revenue to pulp and paper mills

There, when we borrow the ideas from paper industry to treat biomass , somehow we should not turn our attention away from this industry. More we can take advantge of them.