Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

DMT Creative Enterprises started in 1994, specializes in design, engineering and fabrication of equipment for the constructionindustry. Company owner Dave Thiessen has a farm production business that started in 2002 with farm land of 500 acres. DMTstarted a research and development project to develop an innovative high efficiency bio-refining technology to produce furfuralfrom miscanthus.Furfural is a bio-renewable chemical that has gained renewed attention as a potential chemical for the production of bio-chemicals.It is used as a starting material for many high-value chemicals and materials. The project will look at furfural production from thebiomass crop miscanthus. Current industrial furfural production comes from the use of corn residues and is mostly produced inChina. Miscanthus can provide up to 5 times the biomass as corn. If the yield can be increased from current methods industrialstandards of 10%, this will make furfural production in Canada competitive. The objective of this activity is to determine the pretreatmentmethod and process parameters to achieve 95% separation of 3 key elements from miscanthus and an overall yield of20% furfural based on dry weight of miscanthus.Lambton College is partnering with the company DMT to work on the optimization of the furfural production and purificationprocess. The industrial partner, DMT is planning upon successful completion of this project to construct a 1 tonne per dayproduction facility for furfural production from miscanthus.