A pilot plant has opened in Zoetermeer to accelerate the scaling up of biobased building materials. On Monday, September 14, Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning Elanor Boekholt-O'Sullivan officially opened BioBuilt, a TNO facility where companies can develop, test, and bring building products made from wood and plant-based waste streams to production scale.
According to TNO, promising biobased materials often get stuck between the laboratory and the market. Producers do not always have the equipment, knowledge, or investment capacity to test a new product on a production scale. In the pilot plant, they can experiment with a product's composition, try out the production process, and run a demonstration before committing to their own production line. Machteld de Kroon, managing director of the TNO Mobility & Built Environment unit, describes the facility as the missing link between technology development and large-scale application.
Waste wood and horticultural residues as raw materials
TNO points to two residual waste streams that still largely remain outside the construction sector in the Netherlands. Approximately 1,5 million cubic meters of waste wood are incinerated annually, and greenhouse horticulture produces around 500.000 tonnes of residual waste. According to the institute, this waste wood is suitable for higher-value applications such as doors, window frames, and structural building components. Fibers from tomato and bell pepper plants and from pruning waste are being considered for insulation and panel materials.
Trade journal Het Houtblad, which was present at the opening, describes the layout of the hall. There is a finger jointing line to glue short planks and beams together to form long lamellas, and a vacuum press capable of producing cross-laminated timber panels measuring eight by three meters and up to 320 millimeters thick. A scanner detects nails and screws in used wood, after which a robot presses them out of the material. According to the journal, two projects are underway in which circular cross-laminated timber, partly made from pallet wood, is being used in a number of homes and an office building.
Part of a broader scaling-up agenda
The facility is funded by two national schemes: the Growth Fund Programme for a Future-Proof Living Environment of the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and the FTO Investment Programme for Applied Research Facilities of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. TNO positions BioBuilt in the Biobased Building Systems scaling-up chain as a new industrial standard, and links the work to the National Approach to Biobased Construction and the Innovation and Scaling-Up Programme for the housing sector. As examples of companies already using the facility, the institute mentions Dijkshoorn from Bleiswijk and Urban Climate Architects.
Boekholt-O'Sullivan linked the opening to the construction challenge. She stated that construction must proceed faster and with cleaner materials, and that the real challenge now lies in scaling up production so that biobased materials actually end up in homes. Earlier this month , on September 3, the Minister paid a working visit to the fiber hemp chain in the Achterhoek together with Queen Máxima.
Source and photo: TNO
