Qualité bioénergétique de la biomasse forestière en vue de la production de biocarburants de deuxième génération

Second-generation liquid fuels are now at the development stage that precedes their industrial implementation. They offer significant market opportunities for French lignocellulosic resources both from forests and crops. Those resources are limited and it is important to avoid competing against food crops or destabilising the sectors that already operate. It is therefore essential for the actors in research on these resources and processes to work in partnership and produce a common response to these issues. The REGIX project has provided an assessment of the suitability of various types of forests and cultivated biomass to the needs of processes for producing second-generation biofuels via biochemical and thermochemical processes. This article provides an overview of this approach for four classes of forest biomass: short and very short rotation coppice (SRC and VSRC), wood chips from hardwoods and from softwoods. The results show that these classes are very well-suited to most of the specifications for these processes, but a number of drawbacks were also noted, in particular for VSRC.