BioEB is the outcome of more than 20 years of research and development led by Prof. Michel Delmas on vegetal refining
This revolutionary concept is built on the capacity of formic acid to refine non-food biomass into its 3 components: cellulose, lignin and hemicelluloses.
It was from the 2000s that a cellulose pulp equivalent to a commercial pulp was produced, from cereal straw, by a process using mixtures of formic and acetic acids.
Lignin and hemicelluloses were in turn separated without degradation with a breakthrough discovery for lignin and the concept of vegetal refining
It was in 2003 that for the first time in the scientific world, lignin was described as a set of linear oligomers with homogeneous structures close to the native structure of lignin in plant material
There followed a period of intensive research on its structural characterization, confirmed in 2015, and its application possibilities in all fields of modern chemistry
In 2006, a pilot unit is under construction and from 2010 it will become the main demonstration tool of the European Biocore program
This program has benefited from the support of numerous European universities and companies which have validated the product markets but also the industrialization of the process in TRL 6/7
Biocore has also elucidated the last obstacle guaranteeing the success of the industrialization of vegetal refining:
The energy consumption of the process
From July 2016, a new process will be built to solve this problem while maintaining the efficiency of the separation and the quality of the products.
Several months will be needed to establish a new intellectual property on vegetal refining, which will be validated by the filing of 5 patents being extended worldwide
By gathering all this experience in the field of plant refining and the establishment of this new intellectual property, this how the family company BioEB was created in July 2018 by:
Michel Delmas, President
Guo-Fang Delmas, Administrative & Financial Chief Officer
Guo-Hua Delmas, Scientific & Technical Chief Officer