Sustainable chemistry in action – GreenAro accelerates the transition towards greener production of base chemicals

In practice, alternative and sustainable feedstock options include various biomass streams, organic waste, as well as carbon dioxide captured either from emissions or directly from the air. Of these, wood-based biomass—especially biomass arising from forest harvesting and from waste streams in the mechanical and chemical forest industries—could provide a quantitatively significant sustainable feedstock for the chemical industry. Wood biomass mainly consists of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, and therefore differs substantially in chemical structure and elemental composition from crude oil. For this reason, the development and commercialisation of production processes based on wood biomass to replace current organic chemicals and polymers has been slow and challenging, and new innovations are still needed to develop commercially viable processes. 

Aromatics are ring-shaped hydrocarbon structures, many of which are large-scale basic chemicals such as benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX). The combined global production volume of these three chemicals and the polymers derived from them is approximately 120 million tonnes per year, and they are currently produced almost exclusively from fossil feedstocks in oil refineries and petrochemical plants. Products derived from BTX chemicals are widely present in everyday life, including medicines, adhesives, paints and plastics. Sustainable production processes based on alternative feedstocks to replace fossil raw materials for BTX aromatics have been extensively studied, but a large-scale commercial sustainable production process does not yet exist.

Bio-oil is liquefied wood biomass, and one of the most commonly used liquefaction technologies is fast pyrolysis. In fast pyrolysis, solid biomass is treated at approximately 500°C for one second under oxygen-free conditions, producing a dark brown, moderately viscous liquid as the main product: bio-oil. Bio-oil itself contains a significant amount of aromatic compounds, as well as compounds that can be catalytically converted into BTX aromatics. 

In the GreenAro project, funded by Business Finland and completed in October 2025, VTT together with Aalto University and Åbo Akademi investigated the catalytic conversion of fast-pyrolysis bio-oil and glycerol—generated as a by-product of biodiesel production—into BTX aromatics. The research consortium was complemented by industrial partners Borealis, Neste, Prefere Resins and Valmet. Åbo Akademi was responsible for catalyst development, Aalto University for the catalytic conversion of glycerol into BTX components, and VTT investigated the corresponding process using bio-oil as the feedstock.

The project results were promising both in terms of the developed catalysts and the reaction experiments conducted at Aalto University and VTT. It was possible to produce green aromatics by both studied routes. The project also included process modelling of BTX aromatic production using bio-oil and glycerol feedstocks, and based on this modelling, the production costs of aromatics were assessed. According to the calculations, the glycerol route resulted in a relatively high production cost, whereas the bio-oil route was found to have commercial potential, with an estimated production cost of approximately one and a half times that of fossil-based BTX aromatics. However, more data and process concept model development is needed to verify this observation.

After the GreenAro project, the technology readiness level is still low (TRL 3). Our aim is therefore to apply for public follow-up funding while simultaneously identifying companies interested in scaling up the technology in Finland and more broadly across Europe. The goal is for commercial production of sustainable aromatics to begin by 2035.