Expertise

The Plant Fractionation team develops technologies for extracting and purifying plant extracts.

The main projects on which the team is currently working are :

• the production of substrates for first and second generation ethanol,

• the refinement of compounds used to produce green chemical intermediates (pentoses, etc.),

• the isolation of natural substances used in plant protection products, food supplements, and cosmetics (protein by-products, etc.).

The department develops the process, i.e. the operating conditions and technical recommendations, and carries out the pre-productions necessary for sampling and demonstrations. 

The team works mainly on large-scale farming crops (wheat, barley, beet, alfalfa), dedicated crops (miscanthus, switchgrass, phalaris, fescue, sorgho, triticale, poplar, spruce), agro-industrial by-products (wheat and corn bran, beet pulp, alfalfa marc, slop), and harvest residue (wheat and barley straw, corn cane). 

The main techniques used are :

• mechanical, chemical, enzymatic, or thermal treatments,
• chemical or enzymatic depolymerisation,
• purification by solid/liquid separation (sieving, pressing, settling, centrifugation, frontal or tangential filtration),
• exchange of ions, adsorption or chromatography,
• conditioning by concentration, drying, or spraying.

Cooperation :

The Fractionation Department has a wide variety of separation equipements at an industrial scale. This equipment and know-how is made available to these external partners as part of fermentation/purification processing contracts, or as part of joint research and development programmes.The confidentiality of results is a constant concern for research teams.