CSBR , Cashew-Shell Bio Refineries

我们建议将目前由汽油制成的重要芳香化学品的生产转变为由不与粮食争夺土地的食物垃圾制成。我们使用或接触的大多数东西都是由化学工业制造的，其中大部分最初来自化石燃料资源。随着化石燃料的消耗，以及人们对其对全球变暖和气候变化的影响的担忧，我们有必要开发一种工艺，制造出与我们现在拥有和需要的产品具有相似性能和效果的产品，但这些产品来自可再生资源。这意味着我们必须种植植物、真菌、藻类等原料，但我们需要种植这些可再生原料的植物不能使用目前用于种植粮食的土地。理想情况下，这些资源将是来自食品或纸张生产的废物，或者是这些过程的非食品副产品。我们已经确定了腰果壳中发现的一种油（腰果壳液，CNSL）是一种特别合适的资源。它不能食用，几乎没有什么用途，每年的廉价供应量约为100万吨。最重要的是，CNSL只含有几种化学物质，它们的结构非常有趣和令人兴奋。如果油通过加热和蒸馏进一步处理，我们可以提取高达70%的腰果酚。CSBR有限公司是该项目的申请人，该公司获得了圣安德鲁斯大学（USTAN）开发的技术许可，该技术由新的化学工艺组成，可从果果酚中生产绿色无毒碱，广泛应用于整个行业：表面活性剂、粘合剂、耐火添加剂、涂料、洗涤剂、昆虫引诱剂、香料和药品。整个项目涉及建立一个以腰果酚为基础的生物精炼厂，使用许可技术，分两个步骤生产两种平台化学品。转型技术赠款所涵盖的项目部分将使我们能够为扩大规模做好第二步的准备。第一步已经比较先进，正在准备扩大规模。

We propose to transform the production of important aromatic chemicals that are currently made from petrol to being made from a food waste that is not competing with food for land.Most things we use or touch have been made by the chemical industry and most of these are originally derived from fossil fuel based resources. As fossil fuels deplete and because of major concerns about their implication in global warming and climate change, it is essential that we develop processes to make things with similar properties and effects to those we have and need now but derived from renewable resources. This means that we must grow the raw materials in plants, fungi, algae etc. but the plants we need to grow these renewable feedstocks must not use land that is currently used to grow food. Ideally, such resources will be wastes from e. g. food or paper production or will be non-food by-products of such processes.We have identified an oil found in the shell of cashew nuts (cashew nut shell liquid, CNSL) as an especially suitable resource. It is not edible, has few uses and is available at about 1 M tonnes per year at a low price. Most importantly, CNSL contains only a few chemicals and they have very interesting and exciting structures. If the oil is treated further via heating and distillation, we can extract up to 70 % cardanol.CSBR Ltd, the applicant for this project has licensed technology developed by the University of St Andrews (USTAN) , which consists of new chemical processes for making green and non-toxic bases from cardanol for a wide range of applications across the industry: surfactants, adhesives, fire resistant additives, coatings, detergents, insect attractants, fragrances and pharmaceuticals.The overall project concerns setting up a biorefinery based on cardanol, using the licensed technology, to make two platform chemicals in two sequential steps. The part of the project to be covered by the Transformative Technology grant will allow us to make the second step of the process ready for scale up. The first step is already more advanced and is being prepared for scale-up.