非粮生物质高值化利用，到底是什么？全球谁在领跑？Non-Grain Biomass High-Value Utilization: What Exactly Is It and Who Leads Globally?

[Green Fuel International Business Network] has learned that, around the industry topic of "what exactly is the high-value utilization of non-grain biomass and who is leading globally," DT Industry Research Institute recently systematically reviewed the technological evolution, global landscape and Chinese practice of non-grain biomass refining, seeking to clarify three questions: what exactly non-grain biomass refining is, who is leading globally, and what China is doing.

In terms of resource endowment, finding feedstock that can replace oil has become a consensus. According to the "BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2020," global proven oil reserves stood at 244.6 billion tonnes at the end of 2019, sufficient for only 49.9 years at that year's extraction rate; China's reserves were 3.6 billion tonnes, only 1.5% of the global total, sufficient for only 18.7 years. In contrast, the Earth produces about 173 billion tonnes of biomass annually through photosynthesis, 70% of which is carbohydrates (cellulose, starch, etc.) and 20% lignin—currently the only natural carbon source that could replace fossil resources.

The concept of "biomass refining" was first proposed in Science in 1982, with the core idea of learning from petroleum refining: separating every component of biomass feedstock and converting them into different products to achieve full-component utilization of feedstock and maximized product value. "High-value utilization of non-grain biomass" is precisely the concrete expression of this concept in the Chinese industrial context—not using grain, but using straw, wood chips and agricultural and forestry waste and converting them into high-value-added chemicals and materials.

In terms of technology routes, biomass refining has undergone three generations of evolution: the first generation used food crops such as corn, sugarcane and rapeseed oil as feedstock—mature technology but "competing with people for food and with food for land"; the second generation switched to lignocellulosic feedstock such as straw and wood chips, but mainly extracted only cellulose, burning lignin as waste, with low carbon conversion; the third generation, today's lignocellulosic biomass refining, aims at full-component utilization with cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin each in its place, with theoretically no carbon conversion loss. The article particularly notes that lignin has a calorific value of 27.0 MJ/kg while hemicellulose has only 13.6 MJ/kg, but from the perspective of chemical feedstock, lignin is a phenolic polymer and a natural source of aromatic compounds—burning it is like burning the aromatic fraction of petroleum as firewood.

In terms of the global landscape, North America follows a "pulp and paper mill upgrade" route. In 1994, the American Forest & Paper Association proposed the concept of "integrated forest biorefinery"; Canada's Fortress Paper launched a hemicellulose extraction project in Quebec, extracting xylose and furfural from birch; CelluForce produces cellulose nanocrystals and received investment from Schlumberger; British Columbia invested USD 2.25 million in research on a cellulose filament project, and Kruger built the world's first cellulose filament demonstration plant with an output of 5 tonnes/day. But North America also offers lessons: DuPont's cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa was eventually sold and exited, and the DSM-Poet joint venture underwent repeated adjustments, showing that technological leadership does not guarantee successful industrialization.

Europe has the most complete policy framework. In 2013, the EU proposed the BRIDGE program to accelerate the marketization of bio-based products, and in 2016 the BIOFOREVER demonstration project was launched with the participation of 14 European companies. Finland's UPM built the world's first industrial-scale biorefinery converting solid wood into bio-based chemicals in Leuna, Germany, producing 220,000 tonnes of bio-based chemicals per year with an investment of EUR 750 million; it produced its first commercial product, industrial sugar, at the end of 2025, but engineering corrections in the sugar-to-chemicals conversion stage delayed integrated commercial production, and UPM took a EUR 373 million impairment charge for this. Finland's Metsä Group put its biomass refinery into operation in 2017 with pulp capacity of 1.3 million tonnes/year (800,000 tonnes of softwood pulp plus 500,000 tonnes of hardwood pulp), while also producing tall oil, turpentine, bioenergy and biogas; its energy is not only self-sufficient but also supplies heat to the town where it is located. Italy's M&G Group, together with Anhui Guozhen Group, built a biomass refinery in Fuyang that converts more than 1.3 million tonnes of fibrous biomass per year.

Brazil is the world's largest producer of sugarcane ethanol and leads in industrial maturity, but from a "non-grain" perspective this is a contrast, and Brazil is also using profits to feed back into non-grain exploration: Suzano launched its eucalyptus fiber fluff pulp product Eucafluff in 2016, and the 3 million to 6 million tonnes of eucalyptus bark produced each year are already used to extract hexose and convert it into chemicals. Japan follows a refined route, with Nippon Paper Group developing the cellulose-based high-barrier packaging material Shield Plus, using cellulose to make high-value-added functional materials that gradually replace plastics.

China's policy support is the strongest in the world. In January 2023, six departments including MIIT, the NDRC and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for Accelerating the Innovative Development of Non-Grain Bio-Based Materials," specifying that by 2025 some non-grain bio-based products should be competitive with fossil-based products; in 2025 MIIT and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs jointly released a shortlist of typical cases, with 35 projects selected, and the bio-based materials market is expected to exceed RMB 120 billion. At the industrial level, Shengquan Group built the world's first million-tonne-class integrated biomass refining project in Daqing, Heilongjiang, in May 2023, covering 1,500 mu, with investment of more than RMB 2 billion and an annual processing capacity of 500,000 tonnes of straw; its products cover more than a hundred items including cellulose products, furfural, highly active lignin, biochar, xylitol, L-arabinose, bio jet fuel and hard carbon anode materials. Sun Paper follows a route of deep separation of wood chip components; Longlive Bio-Technology built a large-scale lignocellulosic biomass refining production line for full-component utilization in 2011, processing 200,000 tonnes of corn cobs per year. The article argues that China does not lack policies, feedstock or single-point technological breakthroughs; the core task now is to connect single points into the systemic integration of an industrial chain; strictly speaking, there is currently no true global leader.