Yet another interesting year filled with new learnings and findings has gone by. It is a good time to sum up the outcomes from the 2nd reporting period of IMPRESS Project H2020.

During the 2nd reporting period, Avantium focused on the performance of the Dawn Technology^TM demonstration plant by optimizing the production output. Some of the generated streams were purified by Lenntech to condition the sugars for application testing, e.g. Avantium’s conversion of sugars to Monoethylene Glycol (MEG) and Monopropylene Glycol (MPG) and for biomass and xylitol production by Vogelbusch. The achieved sugar purification was satisfactory for Ray Technology^TM testing and was also for applications from Vogelbusch, who was supplied with sugar samples of Avantium and Graanul (renamed to Fibenol). Avantium put effort into the operation and upgrade of the Ray Technology^TM demonstration plant, and production of glycols and optimization of this process continues in order to deliver samples to partners e.g. Sulzer for validation tests of MEG/MPG solutions. Several partners continue developing the purification of various products of the IMPRESS process scheme.

  The key outcomes within the three main processing and product streams of IMPRESS are as follows:  
- Crude lignin: Dawn Lignin streams successfully produced by the Avantium Dawn Technology^TM Demonstration Plant and supplied to partners for testing. From crude lignin, activated carbon was produced successfully and the process of producing lignin nanoparticles was developed and optimised by Aalto. 
- Mixed sugars (C5/C6) and glucose: The purity of the Dawn sugars was improved by Lenntech to make them useful for other partners and relevant technologies within the sugar value chain. Fermentation technologies were developed for xylitol and fodder yeast and purification processes for other sugar streams of interest. 
- PDC has developed different Conceptual Process Designs (CPD's). Sphera has developed and established Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) datasets for benchmark compounds and wood feedstocks. The partners have actively disseminated project results in conferences, social media, webinars and videos. With Xamk´s lead, the consortium is developing an online learning platform with educational material of the project. 
 

Expected results and state at the end of the project:  
•    Dawn Technology™ to be in Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) phase: Techno-economic considerations have generated more information for the process scope. Additional experimental work needs to be done before entering the EPC phase 
•    Good progress has been made with the Ray Technology™, which will generate valuable input for the feed phase by the end of the project for building the commercial demonstration plant
•    Different hemicellulose derived sugar streams have been provided to Vogelbusch for proving biomass fermentation. Know-how about the fermentation of different hemicellulose hydrolysates has been developed successfully, and batch and fed-batch fermentation technologies have been advanced  
•    Different hemicellulose derived sugar streams have been provided to Vogelbusch with the aim to prove xylitol fermentation. The key process steps are under development, with the expectation that a plant concept will be available at the end of the project 
•    Lenntech has made good progress with the filtration experiments, leading to a refined approach to bringing filtration technology at a pilot scale, as a part of the IMPRESS process. These will support the decision-making process on an industrial scale plant feasibility and design 
•    The Simulated Moving Bed (SMB) process exploited by KNAUER has shown sufficient progress towards purifying Xylitol from the fermentation process by Vogelbusch
 
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