Recently in News Roundup Category

A new study from the European Bioplastics and the European Polysaccharide Network of Excellence (EPNOE) estimated that substitution potential of up to 90% of the total consumption of plastics by bio-based polymers are technically possible.

Still, that estimate will not be fulfilled in the near future because of low oil price, high production costs and restricted production capacity of biomass-based polymers, researchers of the study concluded.

2007 global bioplastic capacity (at 360,000 metric tonnes) is said to be only 0.3% of the global plastic production, which is dominated by petrochemical plastics. The bioplastic market, however, experienced a 38% growth rate from 2003 to 2007. European growth rate was said to be as high as 48%.

Standard polymers like polyethylene, polypropylene, PVC or PET, as well as high-performance polymers like polyamide or polyester have already been been totally or partially substituted by their renewable raw materials equivalents.

Based on recent company announcements the production capacity of bio-based plastics is projected to increase from 360,000 tons in 2007 to about 2.3 million tons by 2013, corresponding to an annual growth of 37%.

"Important major projects were delayed in the years 2008 and 2009 due to the financial and economic crisis. Despite the still uncertain data, we deem such studies to be very essential. The role that lightweight conventional plastics played in the past, substituting durable materials like iron and steel in vast products, could soon be taken over by bio-based plastics. As the study shows, the potential is enormous," says Hasso von Pogrell, Managing Director of European Bioplastics.

The study has a lot of good information about starch plastics, cellulosic polymers, polylactic acid (PLA) polymers, PTT from biobased propanediol, biobased polyamides, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), biobased polyethylene and PVC from bio-PE, and other emerging biobased thermoplastics.

FYI. Some recent news on bioplastics that I was not able to post:

• DuPont launches first product using Plantic material

• Plaxica raises £1 million to develop next generation biopolymers

• Johnson & Johnson initiates the production of packages made from green resin

• Cereplast expands into the 200 million consumer Brazilian market with its compostable biodegradable plastics

• Plastic Trees: Part of the Energy Solution? - SPI's Business Blog
  

Renewable chemical companies seem to be getting better in raising money from venture firms these days.

An article from Reuters cited the recent news (which I also posted in my news roundup) about biosuccinic acid producer DNP Green Technology raising $12m from venture firms Sofinnova Partners, Mitsui & Co., Venture Partners, Samsung Ventures Investment Corp., Clifton Group, and AquaRIMCO. All are new investors except for AquaRIMCO.

Reuters also noted other examples such as bioplastic developer Novomer when it raised $14m in August; Draths Corp. with $21.7m in spring; Segetis with a $15m start-up investment from Khosla Ventures in 2007; and recently Rennovia, where I posted in September about their $6m seed funding from 5AM Ventures and Versant Ventures.

Other company activities not mention were OPX Biotechnologies which raised $17.5m in April led by Braemar Energy Ventures; Zeachem, which raised $34m in January; Amyris Biotechnologies, which reportedly raised $41.75 million recently from new investors GrupoCornelioBrennand of Brazil and Naxos UK; and it is also noteworthy to mention the formation of Elevance last year with a $40m funding led by TPG Growth and TPG Biotechnology Partners.

There are of course several biofuel/renewable chemical players that are getting funds from traditional oil and chemical firms. These include Gevo that received X amounts of dollars (or Euro?) last April from French oil company Total; Shell increased its equity stake in Codexis last March; and ExxonMobil investing in Synthetic Genomics last July for more than $300m.

I'm sure there are many more out there that I haven't covered. Let me know! One more thing to mention (that probably already mentioned before) is that there seems to be a lot more interests from venture capital firms to look into green chemistry other than biofuels or other clean techs. I also recalled an email last summer from a venture capital firm interested in knowing more about who's who in this area.

That is why I formed my Green Chemical company list, which I hope will continue to grow.

I apologize for the delay in the News Roundup. I have some big researching to do regarding an upcoming article about high technology chemicals/materials for space crafts. This is my first time covering this market and so if any companies are interested in participating in the article, let me know! I have until November 20 to get information and this will come out on ICIS Chemical Business' December 14 aerospace issue.

In the meantime, here are this week's roundup. Noticed that most of them are about green funds and grants. Get the money flowing!

$12m funds for bio-succinic
DNP Green Technology (one of the biobased succinic acid developers) raised $12m in equity investments led by Sofinnova Partners and including Mitsui & Co. Venture Partners, Samsung Ventures Investment Corporation, the Cliffton Group and AquaRIMCO.

PlastiPure gets NIEHS grant
PlastiPure received a $1.1m grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health and Safety (NIEHS) to continue development and commercialization of plastics that do not leach chemicals with harmful estrogenic activity (EA).

EU biorefinery grants
Borregaard has received 4 million Euros in research grants from the EU, which will be used for demonstration plants within development projects connected to Borregaard's biorefinery concept. The EU's seventh framework programme for R&D is offering altogether EUR 57m through the Joint Biorefinery Call during the period 2010-2014. More than 50 projects applied at the beginning, but only three received the grants so far.

Ok, so I lied. I was able to compile several news after all after trying to clean out most of my unread emails from last week. As previously mentioned, there seems to be more news coming in every time I travel. Or maybe I'm just getting paranoid.

Here are last week's news in no particular order. A lot of the news by the way seem to be from the biofuels sector. Does this mean investments in biofuels are now turning around?

Ontario biomaterials partnership
Elevance is investing $1 million in a partnership with Trent University Biomaterials Research Laboratories, based in Peterborough, Ontario. Trent University's new laboratories, which opened last week, will be used to develop new biomaterials, biochemicals and bioproducts from natural oils.

Pulp ethanol not a fiction
Verenium is testing the effectiveness of its C5 technology for the creation of cellulosic ethanol from the hemicelluloses generated by the pulp and paper process through an agreement with Value Prior to Pulping (VPP), an organization created by the Agenda 2020 Technology Alliance, a special project of the American Forest and Paper Association, and CleanTech Partners.

Jatropha oil on sale
Biofuel Africa has begun commercial production of jatropha oil, said to be the first company in West Africa to move from growing and selling jatropha fruits and seeds to production and sale of jatropha oil on a commercial scale for direct use, without modification, and as a feedstock for biodiesel and synthetic diesel.

Hello from Berlin! Being jetlagged has its perks and one of them is having the time to blog since I can't sleep. As mentioned before, I am covering ICIS' oleochemicals conference and will try to tweet all the good stuff via @ICISgreenblog (keeping my fingers crossed on that internet connection).

While I'm complaining about the size of soda bottles here in Europe (I'm thirsty!), here are this week's news roundup.

BASF likes metathesis tech
Materia has exclusively licensed its metathesis technology to BASF for use in the research and development of certain specialty chemicals. Metathesis catalysts enable the formation and manipulation of carbon-carbon bonds in the synthesis of novel specialty chemicals with superior properties as well as in the development of more efficient and low cost production processes for existing ones.

Air Products' PV contract
Air Products signed a turnkey gas supply contract to provide its SunSource(TM) Solutions liquid bulk and specialty gases, related gas distribution equipment, and engineering services to DuPont Apollo (Shenzhen) Limited at its new amorphous silicon thin-film photovoltaic (PV) facility in GuangMing New District, Shenzhen, China.

No waste biodiesel
Yellow Diesel B.V. has produced high-quality biodiesel in a continuous fixed-bed micro
plant based on heterogeneous catalysis. This process gives pure biodiesel plus a cosmetics/food grade glycerol, with practically no waste streams.

The green chemicals blog will be sporadic next week as I cover the ICIS World Oleochemicals conference in Berlin. I'm expecting lots of good information on the current market for vegetable oil and animal fats-based chemicals and will tweet them live as long as I have good internet connection there. Check out @ICISgreenblog next week!

For now here are this week's news roundup:

Algae chemical partnership
Blue Marble Energy and Bionavitas formed a partnership where Blue Marble Energy will produce high-margin biochemicals from microalgae supplied by Bionavitas.

Clean fuels from syngas
Honeywell's UOP LLC company expanded its alliance with Rentech to support clean fuels production, adding UOP gas processing technology for the treatment of synthesis gas from sources such as biomass, natural gas and coal.

Coke's cogeneration plant
GE Energy, the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company S.A., and the energy development company ContourGlobal started a new cogeneration plant at Coca-Cola Hellenic's Ploiesti bottling facility near Bucharest, Romania.

ICIS Chemical Business (the magazine I work for) published this week its automotive issue and most of the topics seem to congregate on making automobiles green via fuel efficiency and use of renewable fuels.

Andy Brice wrote "The Weighting Game" which talked about innovative chemical products (an example is biobased engineering plastics) that reduce the weight of vehicles, and thus making them more economical and reduces emissions.

Consultants from PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote about the new CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards being recommended by the EPA, which calls for a new minimum average fuel economy requirements of 35.5 miles/gallon for vehicles by 2016 compared to the current 27.5 mpg. The change won't be cheap they said.

Ryan Hickman tells a story about the cash-for-clunkers auto stimulus program in the US (and worldwide), how they affected sales of new automobiles and down the road, demand for automotive chemicals and materials.

I'm receiving a lot of updates from the American Chemistry Council's Polyurethanes 2009 technical conference especially about their renewable content technical session.

Here are some presentation tidbits from that session:

• Battelle Memorial Institute reported a versatile approach to making renewable-content flexible foams derived from vegetable oils, animal fats, and fatty acids using between 20% to 40% glycerine.

• Cargill discussed their new BiOH polyol designed for the production of viscoelastic foams with very high renewable content as well as outstanding performance (in furniture applications).

• Troy Polymers talked about recycling scrap flexible polyurethane foams made with soy polyols.

• DuPont and Aragon Elastomers introduced a study of a renewably sourced high performance ingredient for polyurethanes.

• Vertellus Specialty Materials introduced high molecular weight castor oil-derived triols for a wide range of polyurethanes applications.

• Bayer MaterialScience presented about two-component polyurethane coatings for sustainable construction based on waterborne polyurethanes, natural oil polyols, and polyaspartic resins.

Meanwhile, the ACC awarded DuPont for its green innovative polyurethane technology at the event as well. DuPont received the award in the Polyurethane Chemicals category for its Cerenol® Polyol, a family of engineered renewably sourced polyetherdiols that serves as a soft segment ingredient for polyurethanes.

Here are last month's newly launched green chemicals for readers' perusal. Remember, green is in the definition of the reader (or producer)!

1. Chemtura's mercury remover - Chemtura has launched its GeoBrom™ family of bromine and brominated derivative products for companies employing bromine technologies in the removal of toxic mercury emitted during the combustion of coal in power plants and other coal-fired boilers.

2. BASF green concrete - BASF Construction Chemicals has developed an advanced concrete optimization service called Green Sense Concrete technology that uses BASF's mixture proportioning expertise to determine the optimal combination of recycled materials and tailor-made chemical admixtures needed to improve the desired slump, setting characteristics, strength, and durability of concrete.

3. Honeywell's heat efficiency material - Honeywell has developed a new thermal management material called Honeywell LTM6300-SP, that improves energy efficiency of light emitting diodes (LEDs), which are increasingly being used in applications such as street lamps, automotive lighting, flat panel TV displays and computer monitors.

4. Actega's Solvent-free adhesives - a series of solvent-free polyurethane adhesives for laminates to be used in packaging has been developed by ACTEGA Rhenania. The adhesives have high bio-polyol based content.

5. DuPont's biobased coolant - DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products says its 100% renewably sourced Susterra® propanediol has been approved by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International as a base coolant for all automobile coolant systems.

6. Rhodia fuel-efficient additives - RHODIA has launched its new performance additive Eolys Powerflex™, a catalyst specifically designed for new diesel engines that enables fast regeneration of particulate filters at low temperature therefore optimizing fuel consumption and reducing CO2 emissions by 3 to 5% compared with other technologies.

7. Kraton polymers for natural oils - Kraton Polymers has developed Kraton A styrenic block copolymers (SBCs) that will make it possible to formulate pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs), sealants and coatings using natural oils.

Last week was rife with news about the EPA's plan to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from power plants and manufacturing facilities, as well as planned shake up of EPA's existing chemicals management program (TSCA).

Chemical industry organizations seem ok with the TSCA reform although the same cannot be said with the greenhouse gas emissions regulation. The EPA estimates that its anticipated rulemaking on GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act will likely apply to 14,000 US power stations, refineries and factories. The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association (NPRA) was quick to challenge the agency stating that the EPA lacked the legal authority to decide which facilities should be regulated and which should be exempted.

More on those issues in the coming days ahead. Meanwhile, here are this week's news roundup.

Biomass fuel association formed
Advanced biofuel producers announced the formation of the Low Carbon Synthetic Fuels Association (LCSFA) representing the Biomass-to-Liquids (BtL) industry. The LCSFA was formed to address existing legislative and regulatory inequities that have slowed or even hindered the development of advanced biofuels.

Arkema's recycle solution
Arkema has developed Rcycle™, a global service package based on recycling biobased Rilsan® and Pebax® technical polymers. Rcycle™ covers the collection and sorting of waste, and its reuse in a range of recycled polymers.

Wacker exits solar wafer biz
Wacker Chemie AG exits from the solar wafer business and will transfer its shares in its joint venture WACKER SCHOTT Solar GmbH (WSS) to its former partner SCHOTT Solar AG. WACKER will focus its solar activities on the production of hyperpure polycrystalline silicon.