Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 6th, 2018

[Nathalie Legros]

—bitumen-based products, and really it's going to be an addition to a solution that can be used.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Are we done? We'll take it off Marc's time.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're overdone.

Mr. Cannings.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, both, for being here today and I want to thank you, Mr. Baril, for mentioning the astrophysical observatory in my hometown in British Columbia. I don't know how relevant its research is to this study, but galaxies far, far away, who knows. Thank you mentioning that.

I just wanted to start off saying that I think Canadians have a lot of appetite for new products that will take waste streams, whether it's wood or agricultural waste streams, and turn them into valuable products that might reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, reduce what we have to put into landfills, or simply burn. I keep hearing a deep concern about especially agricultural products that might compete.... You said products that do not compete with the food chain, but even just by planting a crop, you're competing with the food chain in that sense.

I'm not happy to hear that Ford is using soy to make me more comfortable in my car, but the fact that we could, perhaps, use waste product from the pulp and paper industry to replace that is I think good news. On the other hand, I know you're in surface transportation, but you did mention the biofuel that was developed in Canada and used in some new jet fuel. Qantas just had their flight across the Pacific fuelled by brassica carinata oil that was developed here in Canada. One article that I read on that said that one flight—and the fuel was just an additive, a 10% additive—used 150 acres of plants. I think there would be some pause there if Canadians thought, boy, we're using 150 acres for every flight, is that a good use of our land, or the land anywhere on this planet, to grow food? I just wondered if you could comment on that issue, because it's a huge issue for many Canadians.

[Nathalie Legros]

Let's take the example of agricultural fibres. We're trying to use flax hay to produce flax fibres. In Canada, flax is harvested for its seeds. We use flax seed in different industries, and even in food. When we extract the seeds, we are left with bales of flax hay, which can be re-used to extract fibres. These fibres could be compared with wood fibres, which are used in different materials such as bio-composites. In Canada, we don't only grow flax for its seeds, but we could go further and extract its cellulosic fibres. It's the same thing for hemp and wood fibre. There is currently a huge supply of wood fibre, because it is a by-product of the paper and pulp industry.

[Éric Baril]

Another sector in which the NRC is active is the production of biofuels that aren't produced from agricultural sources, but from waste bio-digestion. Household waste and municipal wastewater are of little value, but they actually form biomasses that can be converted into biofuels. In fact, there are many other sources of biofuels.

The fact that biofuels are now being used to power airplanes demonstrates their potential. The source of the biofuels becomes important. It is quite appropriate and important to choose a source that has no impact on the food chain.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

That was my point. I'm hoping that when we make decisions in the future, and now, we don't push ahead with products that are going to limit our ability to produce food. In a few years we'll have nine billion people on the planet, and we'll need every square metre we can find.

I wanted to get back to lignin, which seems like a very good-news story in Canada. There are pulp mills all across the country. Some of them are in various states of difficulty because of reduced demand for paper and pulp. I've asked this of other witnesses, but what's the volume of lignin that you can foresee being used in these industries versus the volume of lignin that is produced? I assume we have an overabundant source, and this will be just a small part of that. Can you comment on how this might boost the pulp and paper industry?

[Nathalie Legros]

First of all, lignin is extracted or precipitated from black liquor. To understand how much lignin can be obtained, one only has to look at the corresponding volume of black liquor. I don't think that all pulp and paper companies will be converting their black liquor into lignin, because they use the former for other things nowadays, but the volume of the latter can be very significant. Many companies such as Domtar and West Fraser already have semi-commercial lignin demonstration and production plants.

I can't tell you how much lignin is currently produced, but I can share statistics on the volumes of plastics. In 2013, 233 million tonnes of plastics were produced; in 2020, it is projected to reach 330 million tonnes.

We could consider the possibility of replacing a small portion of these plastics with lignin in very specific applications when possible. Either way, I think that there will never be enough lignin for it to be used in a wide variety of applications, at least not in the years to come. This is the way we should approach this. We have to work on the right products with the right applications. We have to identify where it is possible to replace some of these plastics with lignin. I specifically mentioned polyurethane foam, but lignin can also in part replace PVC. PVC is one of the most commonly used plastic polymers for construction, but it is not very environmentally friendly. We have achieved lots of progress with techniques to inject lignin into PVC while maintaining the performance of PVC products.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Whalen.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to talk about the same subject as Mr. Cannings.

Could we establish standards for lignin use in plastics, kind of like the witnesses who spoke right before you mentioned needing standards to sell liquid wood as a biofuel?

[Nathalie Legros]

I don't know if standards are the most important thing right now. Lignin is produced in powder form, which is not always very consistent. What we really need to do is develop technologies that make this lignin powder usable by the plastics industry.

A good example of this is what we're doing with Domtar. The company's lignin powder is transformed into small granules that look like the plastic granules used in the plastics industry to produce moulded or extruded objects.

I don't really see the need to establish standards. It's more a question of developing solutions that allow existing industries to use these new bio-materials.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Is it easier for lignin to decompose? Does it stay in the environment for less time? Can you explain?

[Nathalie Legros]

Yes.

Lignin is a material that is just as compostable as cellulose in certain conditions. It can also be used to create compostable products. For the moment, we're trying to use lignin to partially replace plastics that aren't necessarily compostable as of now.

To answer your question, I would say that it is a compostable and biodegradable material.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

In terms of other roles that government might play, in addition to setting standards or helping to develop the technology for the use of biofuels, is there another recommendation you might have—in addition to the recommendations we heard earlier—about how government can help the adoption of these biomaterials by industry?

[Nathalie Legros]

We put a lot of effort into the development of bioproducts, but more upstream, like the development of lignin, cellulosic materials, and so on. What is needed now is to bridge the gap with the end-user, so to help with communication and discussion between the biomass developer or transformer and the end-user like the automaker, the company that produces materials for construction, or the company that produces packaging. We're really trying to develop technology that bridges this gap and also put in place multi-party projects in which we can have all this—

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Well, that sounds interesting. Maybe if I can do the comparison between the soy-based bioplastics that Ford is using and the lignin-based bioplastics that they hope they will use, who funded the research for the soy-based bioplastics, and how did that come about? Was it Ford itself?

[Nathalie Legros]

I don't have exact answer, but I'm pretty sure it's a combination of Ford and the U.S. government, because the soybean is quite important in the U.S.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Okay, so that seems like something that would be valuable.

On the foams you're talking about, that are made with lignin, would there be any concern about the decomposition of those foams if they were used in cars?

[Nathalie Legros]

There are some performance aspects that have to be evaluated, but we have good results so far. For sure, we also have to evaluate the long-term performance. We haven't done everything in terms of research, but definitely we obtained very good success with lignin in polyurethane foam.

It's not only the NRC that is working on that: a lot of universities are also developing polyurethane foam for insulation. What we do at NRC these days is really to develop polyurethane foam for the cushioning materials that they use in car seats, furniture, and so on. The volume is huge. It's very important. Again, it's a question of finding a way to use a little lignin in a lot of volume.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

I'm not sure if you're able to answer the question on the economics, but if we had a barrel of lignin versus a barrel of oil, are we looking at selling a barrel of lignin for $60 a barrel to a petrochemical company to make plastic, and do you get more or less plastic out of the lignin? What are the economics of it?

[Nathalie Legros]

That's an excellent question.

When we work with the end-user, cost is the main issue. When we develop new products, we have to maintain the cost and increase the performance, or reduce the cost and maintain the performance. It's always like that. One advantage we see with lignin, for example, in polyurethane is that we try to replace a chemical component that is more expensive than lignin. That's really the way we can convince the end-user to adopt such technology.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

Do you have some numbers you can share with the committee on the values?

[Nathalie Legros]

I don't have the number in my mind, but it's something that we can provide to you for sure.

[Nick Whalen, Liberal, St. John's East, NL]

As well, the sheet that you quoted from earlier would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

You have one minute.