Covestro: EU Project “Bio4PURConti” Aims to Enable Continuous Production of Bio-Based Aniline

Covestro has launched the EU-funded research project “Bio4PURConti” (Bio-Based Continuous Production for Sustainable Polyurethane Industry). The initiative aims to develop the world’s first continuous production process for bio-based aniline. Covestro is coordinating the consortium, which consists of ten partners from seven European countries.

Aniline is a key raw material for the chemical industry and is used primarily in the production of methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), an important precursor for polyurethanes. According to Covestro, conventional fossil-based aniline production generates around 20 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions worldwide each year.

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As part of the project, a biotechnological production route will be further developed. A specially engineered microorganism converts plant-based sugars derived from biomass into an intermediate product through fermentation. This intermediate is then transformed into aniline via chemical catalysis. The resulting product is based entirely on biogenic carbon and is intended to be used as a drop-in raw material in the polyurethane value chain without requiring modifications to existing production processes.

A central focus of the project is the transition from the currently used fed-batch fermentation process to a continuous fermentation process. While fed-batch systems involve the gradual addition of feedstocks and batch-wise product removal, continuous operation is expected to deliver higher productivity and efficiency. The process will also utilize renewable feedstocks such as wood-based sugars.

The technology will be scaled up from laboratory to semi-industrial scale. Demonstration plants are planned with reactor volumes of 1.5 cubic meters at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent and at Covestro’s site in Leverkusen. The facilities will integrate cell recycling, real-time analytics, and downstream processing steps. Technical objectives include increasing space-time yields and significantly reducing the product-related carbon footprint.

In addition to Covestro, the consortium includes Fibenol Imavere OÜ (Estonia), the University of Stuttgart, Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant VZW (Belgium), ZEDO Dortmund, NTNU (Norway), Axel’One (France), VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Finland), the Cluster Industrial Biotechnology (CLIB), and AEIMIS (Spain).

The project has a total budget of €8.4 million, of which €7 million is funded by the European Union. The project duration is 42 months. Funding is provided by the Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) under the Horizon Europe research and innovation program through Grant Agreement No. 101292477.

With an aniline production capacity of more than one million tonnes per year, Covestro is one of the world’s largest producers of this chemical building block. The company views continuous bio-based production as a means of reducing dependence on fossil raw materials and lowering greenhouse gas emissions throughout the polyurethane value chain.

More information: www.covestro.com

Covestro AG, Leverkusen

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