Across the UK and Europe, roughly 4.5 million tonnes and 60 million tonnes of waste wood, respectively, is generated annually from construction, transportation, demolition, furniture and other end-of-life products. While much of this material still contains valuable components, contamination from paints, coatings, adhesives and other materials can make conventional recycling challenging. Based on the level of contamination, these wood wastes are graded into A, B, and C. Grade A waste wood refers to uncontaminated, untreated wood that is free from paint, preservatives, or any other coatings. Grade B is slightly contaminated wood, such as painted or varnished wood. Grade C waste wood consists of heavily contaminated or treated wood, such as railway sleepers or telegraph poles. These waste woods require additional processing and special treatments to remove the contaminants before recycling and transformation into value added products.
The WoodVALOR project is exploring how various grades of wood waste streams can be transformed into valuable bio-based products, creating new opportunities for resource recovery and circular manufacturing.
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(B)
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As part of the Horizon Europe-funded project, C-Source Renewables is working alongside partners from across Europe to develop innovative routes for converting wood-derived sugars into products such as lactic acid and microbial oils. Through biotechnology, the project aims to unlock greater value from waste wood while supporting the transition towards a circular bioeconomy.
Unlocking the Value Within Waste Wood
The WoodVALOR project is focused on developing technologies that enable contaminated and post-consumer wood waste to be recovered, processed and transformed into valuable feedstocks and products.
At CSR, our work begins with cellulose rich solids obtained from waste wood post decontamination, lignin and xylan recovery into glucose-rich hydrolysates that can be used as feedstocks for fermentation processes. Each grade is processed in the same way to create valuable sugar streams from waste materials; this work helps unlock new opportunities for resource recovery and sustainable biomanufacturing.
To achieve this, different feedstocks including birch wood, Grade A wood waste and mixed Grade B & C wood waste are first subjected to decontamination, followed by pretreatment, and fractionation, conducted by project partners LUKE and Celignis. As discussed earlier these steps remove the harsh chemicals and other contaminants in the waste wood samples and prepare the material for further processing, where enzyme assisted saccharification of cellulose rich polysaccharides is carried out by improving access to the cellulose contained within the wood.
By investigating a range of wood waste feedstocks, the project is helping to build a greater understanding of how different waste streams can be incorporated into future bio-based value chains.
Processing of pallet waste into fine saw dust
Following pretreatment, the solids undergo enzymatic hydrolysis.
Enzymatic hydrolysis uses specialised enzymes to convert cellulose into simple sugars, producing glucose-rich hydrolysates that can be utilised as fermentation feedstocks. This stage creates an important link between low-value waste materials and higher-value biochemical production pathways.
Generating reliable and high concentration sugar streams from waste wood is a key part of the wider WoodVALOR process, helping maximise the value recovered from waste resources while creating new opportunities for sustainable biomanufacturing.
Enzymatic hydrolysis experiments or hydrolysate production. (A) Enzymatic hydrolysis; (B) Concentration of hydrolysate using Rotary vacuum distillation
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Fermentation of Wood-Derived Sugars
At CSR, the resulting hydrolysates are used as feedstocks for fermentation processes designed to produce valuable bio-based products.
Within the WoodVALOR project, this work focuses on the production of lactic acid and microbial oils using microorganisms capable of utilising wood-derived sugars. These products can then be used by other project partners as building blocks for the development of bio-based materials and formulations for the paints industry.
The work highlights the potential of industrial biotechnology to transform waste-derived feedstocks into useful products, creating new value from materials that may otherwise have limited end-of-life options.
Product Recovery and Purification
Once fermentation is complete, the focus shifts to product recovery and purification.
This stage involves separating lactic acid and microbial oils from the fermentation broth and preparing them for further processing and application development within the project.
Although often overlooked, product recovery is a vital and make or break part of the process, ensuring that valuable products can be successfully recovered and prepared for further development.
Supporting the Circular Bioeconomy
WoodVALOR brings together partners from across Europe to develop innovative solutions for wood waste valorisation, helping create new pathways for transforming challenging waste streams into valuable resources.
For C-Source Renewables, the project aligns closely with our wider mission of converting waste-derived feedstocks into valuable sugars, chemicals and fuels that can be brought back into the supply chain.
While wood waste is often viewed as a disposal challenge, projects such as WoodVALOR demonstrate its potential as a valuable renewable resource. Through the combination of pretreatment, enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation and product recovery, materials that might otherwise be discarded can be transformed into useful products with future industrial applications.