Weekly News Roundup

The blog will be on hiatus for 1.5 weeks as the green blogger attends the Helsinki Chemicals Forum this week as well as prepares for her final exam on May 24.

There have been a couple of big news the past week such as DSM's announcement of the construction of their commercial bio-succinic acid plant with Roquette; Verdezyne hooking up with BP and DSM on their recent financing round; Singapore-based oleochemical company Wilmar building a natural fatty alcohol plant in Europe in partnership with chemical company Huntsman; Metabolix receiving $6m grant from the DOE for a project aimed at increasing fuel and chemical yields from bio-based products made from switchgrass; another announcement (currently embargoed) coming in this Tuesday; and more announcements below.

I will try to expand on some of them in another post when the blog comes back as well as start writing some overview from the very successful ICIS 1st surfactant conference.

Carbon dioxide supplier Linde Group and algae developer Sapphire Energy have entered a multi-year development deal for a low-cost system to deliver carbon dioxide to commercial-scale, open-pond algae-to-fuel cultivation systems. A single commercial algae-fuel production facility is estimated to require 10,000 tonnes/day of CO2, which is comparable to 30% of the current merchant market for CO2 in the U.S.

Elevance and DSM have signed a letter of intent for a collaboration to evaluate Elevance's monomers for production of specialty bio-based high performance thermoplastic materials for DSM's engineering plastics portfolio. Elevance will provide natural monomers from plant oils.

Dow and PolyOne in PLA additives
Dow Chemical's Plastics Additives business teamed up with PolyOne to introduce OnCap BIO L masterbatches based on Dow's PARALOID BMP-520, a new generation of impact modifier that helps improve impact resistance of opaque, injection-molded polylactic acid (PLA) products with minimal effect on heat distortion temperature and stiffness.

Ashland Hercules Water Technologies has introduced PTV M-5309, a new corn oil extraction aid from ethanol production. The product significantly increases corn oil yield up to three times more corn oil by improving the release of oil during mechanical extraction.

GreenField Ethanol launched G2Biochem, a collaborative partnership that will acquire, validate and commercialize GreenField's patented next-generation ethanol process technology using variety of biomass such as agricultural residues, energy crops and woody biomass. G2Biochem is backed by major international partners & collaborators including Andritz and Novozymes.


INSIGHT: Is bio-based BDO for real?

US producer Eastman Chemicals has doubled its capacity for its Tritan copolyester, producing 60,000 tonnes/year for 2012.

Brazil-based FCC introduced a thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) that is based on feedstock from plants.

New Britain Palm Oil Ltd (NBPOL) and Wilmar International have agreed to supply Continental Europe with fully segregated sustainable palm oil from NBPOL's plantations in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands by the middle of next year.