Recently in News Roundup Category

Here are last week's news in no particular order. I will put a separate post about the DOE's biomass grant announced last week.

More money for Metabolix
Bioplastic developer Metabolix has completed its public offering of 3,450,000 shares of its common stock at a price of $9.00 per share for gross proceeds of $31 million. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes.

Recycled plastic bridges
Axion International Holdings completed its $957,000 contract for the construction of two railroad bridges designed from nearly 100% recycled plastics. The US Army has commissioned each of these bridges to be built at Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Carpet fiber eco-certified
Invista said it is the first company to obtain Environmentally Preferable Product (EPP) certification for its carpet fibers under a new, expanded standard by third-party certification company Scientific Certification Systems (SCS).

Biomass fuel plant approved
renewaFUEL LLC plans to construct and operate its next-generation biomass fuel production facility at the Telkite Technology Park near Marquette, Michigan. The plant will produce 150,000 tons/year of high-energy, low-emission biofuel cubes, a composite of collected wood and agricultural feedstocks supplied from local farmers and loggers for the facility.

GE's biggest wind service deal
GE and E.ON Climate & Renewables North America signed a 7-year operation and maintenance agreement covering EC&R's complete fleet of 529 GE wind turbines installed in the United States. The O&M deal is one of the largest wind services agreements ever signed by GE.

And in ICIS news (requires subscription):
Bioplastics' share of auto sector to increase, a consultant with BeOne Hamburg reported.

French chemical maker Arkema forecast that 10% of its sales will come from renewable resources.

Producing biodiesel from sugarcane is less than five years away from becoming commercially viable, as illustrated by two US companies.

For now here are this week's news roundup:

Myriant's Biosuccinic alliance
Biosuccinic developer Myriant Technologies has joined forces with Uhde for engineering, procurement and construction of Myriant's planned global scale biosuccinic acid plants. The company expects to begin commercialization of biobased succinic acid by second half of 2010.

Honeywell's bio-pyrolysis oil alliance
Italian power company Industria e Innovazione selected Honeywell's Envergent Technologies business for the development of a facility to convert biomass into pyrolysis oil for renewable power generation using Envergent's RTP® rapid thermal processing technology. The facility will convert a mix of pine forest residues and clean demolition wood into pyrolysis oil, a liquid biofuel.

... and China biofuel projects
Honeywell signed a memorandum of understanding with China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) where the two companies will collaborate on a range of biofuels technologies and projects in China.

Verenium ends collaboration
Verenium closes its joint research collaboration with Syngenta Participations AG of Switzerland. The company obtained microbial and non-plant rights to several late-stage enzyme development candidates including alpha amylases and glucoamylases for starch processing in biofuels production.

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.