Engineering Applications Are Bioplastics' Holy Grail

Two leaders in the development ofsustainable polymers are extending research into a new generation ofengineering plastics made from renewable resources.

The research mates Ingeo polylactic acid from NatureWorks of Minnetonka, MN, with furanicchemicals developed by Avantium of Amsterdam,The Netherlands.

"We find the material intriguing with a host of potentialmarket applications," says Steve Davies, director of corporate communicationsand public affairs at NatureWorks. "Before we can make a solid assessment, moreresearch on a larger scale needs to be conducted. The research and developmentproject continues."

From a chemist's perspective, furanics are a family ofaromatic unsaturated polyesters, while polylactide is an aliphatic polyester. Daviessays they would complement each other in how they offer alternatives totraditional petroleum-based polymers.

Furanics are chemicals that are formed when you takecarbohydrates and remove the water. Avantium says it has developed a patentedchemical catalytic process technology to convert biomass directly intofuranics.

In comparison to biological production technology, such asfermentation widely used to make bioplastics, Avantium's catalytic process has thesebenefits:

Speed. Chemicalconversion takes seconds to minutes, while fermentation takes several days.

Adaptability. Thecatalytic process can be run using existing chemical industry infrastructure.

Costs. A typicalcatalyst used in a chemical process costs less than 1 cent per gallon of endproduct. Enzymes used in fermentation processes are typically 6 to 65 cents pergallon of end product, according to Avantium.

Avantium partnered with NatureWorks to develop commercialplastics for its technology. But it looks like a long road. There are no plansat the moment to develop production facilities even though the partnership isnow a year old.

"It is simply too early, and like any new-to-the-worldmaterial, much needs to be learned about it first," Davies says. "Commercialproduction would require both a new monomer production process and anunderstanding of the most desirable compositions ... If we had to estimate a timefor commercialization, our best estimate would be that commercial samples maybe available in several years."

Potential markets are personal electronics, automotive,fibers and various engineering plastics applications.

Avantium, which calls its process YXY, was founded in 2000by Royal Dutch Shell, Eastman Chemical, Akzo-Nobel and Pfizer to developcatalysts for chemical and refinery applications.

NatureWorks was launched in 1997 as a Cargill researchproject looking for uses of plant carbohydrates as plastics' raw materials.NatureWorks LLC is now an independent company owned by Cargill and is one ofthe world's largest producers of bioplastics.