Page 104 - Biorefinery 2030 Future Prospects for the Bioeconomy (2015)

72 3 Industrial Symbiosis at the Bazancourt-Pomacle Biorefinery

The symbiosis is developed through the implementation of environmental tools
such as lifecycle analyses, materials and energy appraisals and so on. These
evaluations, both quantitative and qualitative, are powerful tools to manage the
flows within the biorefinery and to define appropriate environmental indicators.
Additionally, they have shown themselves to be essential for the requirements of
certification agencies such as ISO.

2.2 The Firms Making Up the Biorefinery

There is a wide range of close interactions between the different firms at the
Bazancourt-Pomacle biorefinery. They involve exchanges of products and
by-products, energy, water and steam. 4
The greatest originality of the biorefinery is the wide range of raw materials
processed at the site. Most of the world’s biorefineries are dedicated to a single type
of biomass. At Bazancourt-Pomacle, three raw materials are processed: sugar beet,
wheat and alfalfa.
From sugar beet, the CRISTAL UNION sugar factory produces white sugar.
Wheat is used by CHAMTOR to produce glucose and starch products. However,
this is not the full extent of the site’s production. The by-products resulting from the
processing of the three raw materials are used to produce a wider range of products:
biofuel, alcohol for the pharmaceutical industry, cosmetics ingredients, spent grain,
pellets from dehydrated pulp and alfalfa, etc. These by-products are not processed
at the sugar plant or by CHAMTOR. Various flows of materials results from these
activities, which are the basis of the industrial symbiosis existing on the site
(c.f. Fig. 3.2). Some of the firms on the site were specifically set up to make use
of by-products. CRISTANOL, for example, was initially created to process sugar
beet by-products, providing farmers with more outlets for their production and at
5
the same time anticipating the end of CAP subsidies.
In order to make use of the by-products of plant biomass, the actors involved
with the biorefinery (industrial firms and sugar beet farmers belonging to the
CRISTAL UNION cooperative) decided to set up a research centre on the site.
Indeed, to develop new crops as much as possible, it was necessary to find new
outlets for arable production. Thus, one of the first units created at the biorefinery,
in 1989, was the joint Agro-Industry Research and Development Centre (ARD).
The purpose of ARD is to develop innovative, competitive products and processes
from biomass. ARD plays a vital role in the industrial symbiosis in operation at the
site. The centre is the heart of research activity on the site, and its work is used by

4
Camille Vicier produced a first outline of the carbon footprint in a report entitled “The
biorefinery, a possible entry to anthropogenic carbon reservoir,” written during an internship at
ARD in 2012–2013, under the direction of Fre ´de ´ric Meylan and Suren Erkman, Industrial Ecology
Group, University of Lausanne (unpublished).
5
C.f. Chap. 2.