US Novomer brings green plastic to market

30 June 2008 21:35  [Source: ICIS news]

NEW YORK (ICIS news)--US-based green plastics company Novomer has introduced its first commercial product, NB-180, a sacrificial binder for high-tech applications, company officials said on Monday.

“We believe that NB-180 is the cleanest-burning binder available, and demand is very strong for these types of materials in clean-room technologies,” said Fox Holt, product manager at Novomer.

Used in the manufacturing of ceramics, microelectronics, nanotechnology, metal brazing and fuel cells, sacrificial binders provide mechanical strength and adhesion. When the manufacturing process is complete, they are burned away.

Holt estimated the market for the specialty material at about 150,000kg/year.

NB-180 is a poly(propylenecarbonate) (PPC) produced using Novomer’s proprietary catalysts, which react epoxides with carbon dioxide, Holt said.

The process consumes only half the petrochemical feedstock of typical polymerizations, said CEO Charles Hamilton. It also produces uniquely regular polymers that burn cleanly, uniformly, and at relatively low temperatures – all desirable qualities in a sacrificial binder, he added.

NB-180 is being toll manufactured, but Novomer has been in talks with major chemical companies to partner for production of the polymers at the scale required by larger, more commoditised markets such as coatings, said Hamilton.

Novomer was founded in 2004 based on catalyst technologies developed at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York,

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By: Clay Boswell
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