Sustainable Forest Resource Biorefineries – Vision for the Future

The forest products industry has been a globally competitive industry in the US and North America for much of the last century. Abundance of forest resources, high quality infrastructure for its collection and processing at large scale, availability of human and financial capital and accessibility to the markets are the key competitive advantages. This industry has been primarily focused on producing low cost cellulose fiber and fiber products including building materials. The industry's markets are mature and the products have become commodities and as a result, profit margins have dwindled. High investment costs, increasing costs of raw materials, and leveling of operational efficiency and the technology playing field have thrown the industry's future economic viability into question. The industry is responding by looking to expand the the product portfolio to increase revenue streams and profitability. A diverse portfolio of bioenergy and biomaterials products can transform conventional pulp and paper mills into full fledged biorefineries.  With significant expertise in the understanding, logistics, handling and processing of lignocellulosic biomass and sustainable forestry practices, the forest industry has much to offer in contributing to the future development and engineering of sustainable biorefineries. In addition to high value cellulose fiber and fiber based products including nano-cellulose composites, the individual constituents of biomass namely hemi-cellulose, lignin, extractives and such can be sustainably extracted and converted to value-added products. In addition to second and third generation biofuels, bioenergy and other bio-based products offer a tremendous renewable products opportunity for the US and much of the world. Thermochemical or biochemical approaches or a combination of the two hold promise for the future.  There are still unsolved scientific and engineering challenges in achieving future sustainable biorefineries including recalcitrance of biomass, density of biomass feedstock, low cost biomass pretreatment approaches, separation and purification of sugar and non-sugar streams, bioengineering of fermentative organisms, removal of fermentation inhibitors and purification of product streams, novel bioprocessing approaches suitable for mixture of biomass feedstocks and value added co-product development. The approaches and solutions need to include the local and regional natures of biomass species and sustainability considerations and they can be in combination with existing forest and other biomass based industries.