Starting from the 2G woody biomass process, BIOPYRANIA will develop new high performance pyrazine containing PAs and PBIs in three phases:

Screening Phase during which several experiments will be performed at small scale. The fermentation process from biomass will be developed, together with the upscaling process to provide monomer for the polymerization experiments. A screening phase is also foreseen for material testing as anion exchange membranes and electrical vehicles based on small polymer quantities. Few critical tests will be done on those polymers in order to decide which homopolymer or copolymer compositions are the most interesting to make at a bigger scale in the next phase.

Development Phase during which the fermentative process will be scaled up at the pilot level to validate production in an industrial setting. The resulting building blocks will be delivered for pyrazine monomer production and the best (co)polymer compositions based on processability and application performance in the screening phase will be upscaled in this phase.

Demonstrator Phase during which the best application results from the development phase will serve as input for the demonstrator phase, boiling down to the beginning of the value chain: application performance, polymer composition, type of pyrazine monomer, nature of amino acid building block. The most appropriate component will be upscaled in order to have enough material for the demonstrators in electrical vehicles and electrolyzers/fuel cells.