The topic Biorefinery is a joint research focus within the Research Division "Thermal Process Engineering & Simulation". Biorefineries are integrative, multifunctional overall concepts using biomass as raw material while producing a broad variety of sustainable intermediate and end products like chemicals, materials, bioenergy and biofuels. The aim of those Biorefineries has to be the complete use of the biomass. Parts of the biomass that can not be used for producing materials are utilised to supply the process or external users with energy.

Our research covers different types of Biorefineries (material oriented, energy oriented, differend kinds of raw materials, centralised, decentralised). The focus of our investigations lies in the fields of:

• Lignocellulosic Biorefineries
• Utilisation of currently unused or only energetically used raw materials, like residues from the agricultural or wood processing industry (e.g. cereal straw, bark, sawmill wastes or wood trunks and pruning)
• High share of conversion of the biomass to materials (chemicals, materials, …)
• Production of Nanolignin as high value-added intermediate product
• Decentralised Biorefinery concepts
• Minimal impact of the Biorefinery concepts on the environment

The Research and Development activities on Biorefineries comprise all aspects of the Research Division. These include:

• practical work in laboratory and technical room
• simulation based work in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
• simulation based work in Process Simulation
• Research on essential physical properties
• economic analysis