National Science and Technology Development Agency Thailand (NSTDA) is implementing the government’s ‘Thailand 4.0’ initiative to promote strategic biotechnology growth at the country’s Eastern Economic Corridor of Innovation (EECi).
One part of this new ‘biopolis’ complex is the GMP biorefinery pilot plant at EECi, for which German engineering company Glatt Ingenieurtechnik (Glatt) was selected to provide the engineering services. The contract between NSTDA and Glatt comprises the conceptual and basic design phases for the GMP biorefinery.
The main objective of the GMP Biorefinery Pilot Plant at EECi is to provide a “non-proprietary (generic) equipment” platform for private and public organizations, as well as local and international universities to scale-up and validate their laboratory prototypes and perform techno-economic feasibility studies before investing in specific production lines.
Glatt says the biorefinery platform will be designed in such a way that allows users to reconfigure the unit operation arrangement (using a ”LEGO box” concept) and adjust the operating parameters to extreme values to optimize the process conditions (flexible process window for optimization) and customize or scale-up the equipment. Glatt in Germany will lead the engineering project and design the biotech process plant.