It feels extremely fun to announce that Sekab and Peab have now put some lignin in asphalt! Sundsvall a town in Sweden let us use a very suitable test area with around 8000-10 000 cars passing per day.
Sekab and Peab Asfalt have within the EU project Rewofuel since the start in June 2018 worked together to reduce the climate impact of asphalt production. Through an iterative collaboration, lignin has been produced by Sekab in Örnsköldsvik with the right quality that Peab Asfalt needed to integrate the lignin in their asphalt production.
An important piece of the puzzle has been that Peab Asfalt has its own lab and pilot equipment, so lignin from Sekab has been able to be sent there directly for testing and evaluation.
In the Biorefinery Demo Plant that Sekab operates and where Sekab’s technology platform CelluAPP is verified, there has been intensive work to obtain the quantities of lignin with the right quality that are needed.
The work has progressed well in Biorefinery Demo Plant and I feel proud of what Sekab’s operating staff has achieved in this project.
It will be so real that now in Sundsvall there will be cars running on lignin that we, Sekab produced in Örnsköldsvik!
Within the Rewofuel project we are planning several more test areas out in traffic to be filled with CelluAPP lignin.
Sekab are involved in a number of commercial projects with our CelluAPP platform, we see the value of doing something with lignin as our technology produces large amounts of lignin. Without doing the test surfaces needed on the roads and evaluating these over many years, it is not realistic to dare to hope for this application with lignin in asphalt.
There are many different processes to increase the value of lignin. Integrating lignin into asphalt and reducing the amount of oil in the asphalt is an application of many.
It feels very good that we have now taken a step towards an application that can really provide great environmental benefits. If we can reduce the amountoil that is currently added to asphalt production we see great environmental benefits.
During the autumn, the Rewofuel project will invite you to a webinar on lignin in asphalt, where Peab Asfalt and Sekab will talk about their work and how they view this development.
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