For a directed and successful transfer of low TRL scientific approaches to biorefinery processes into industrially relevant processes, it is important to get a good understanding of the integration of the process steps at an early stage. To obtain this understanding, we help to develop and design process chains and entire biorefineries. Block flow diagrams and process flow diagrams are developed. With the available information on operation conditions and process specifications like feedstock compositions, conversion yields, separation efficiencies etc. from experiments or literature, we can simulate the mass and energy flows of entire plants with state-of-the-art software like AspenPlus or SuperPro Designer. The results of these simulations are a suitable basis for identification of possibilities for technical improvements, estimations of CAPEX and OPEX for commercial scale plants as well as assessments of environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions. By analysing different process configurations, we can also identify the most promising setup and give quick feedback to experimental developments at an early stage.

• Development of separation processes and cascades in the biorefinery pilot plant. A wide range of industry-related separation equipment is available, such as solid-liquid separation with decanter centrifuge, screw separator, chamber filter press and liquid-liquid separation with membrane filtration, liquid-liquid extraction, distillation, evaporation, preparative HPLC and others.
• Conceptual design of biorefineries: Process design for flowsheet development, flowsheet simulation e.g. with AspenPlus and SuperPro Designer, scale-up
• Balancing, techno-economic analysis and evaluation of biorefineries