Covestro’s CO2-based Plastics Production Method Among Finalist at Award Ceremony

A team of Covestro and RWTH Aachen has developed a new method for the use of carbon dioxide as a raw material, which ranks among the year’s best innovations in Germany. The new technologies make CO2 usable in plastics production and thereby reduces fossil resources like petroleum. They made it to the final round of the renowned German President's Award for Innovation in Science and Technology, which was presented in Berlin by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Using CO2 for Resource Conservation and Circular Economy

According to team spokesperson Gürtler, using CO2 contributes to resource conservation by partially replacing the conventional raw material oil as the sole source of carbon. At the same time, it also makes it possible to produce more recyclable plastics whose components could be recycled more easily. In addition, the circular economy will benefit from the reuse of carbon dioxide. 

“We also see considerable potential for value creation by using CO2,” stressed Gürtler, who is responsible for developing new methods and products at Covestro.

“With the new platform technology, CO2 can be used to develop a wide range of high-quality plastics,” explained Berit Stange. She is responsible for the circular economy in a leading position at Covestro and supports the marketing of the new method.

Chemical precursors with CO2 (polyols) are already on the market for producing soft foams (polyurethane) for mattresses and soft furniture. The new material cardyon® is now also used for sports flooring. Further areas of application include elastic textile fibers, insulation and car interior applications.

Custom-made Catalyst

The use of CO2 was conceived in a research breakthrough. The difficulty that CO2 has in forming chemical bonds was a great challenge that was overcome. The solution was essentially found in a custom-made catalyst. It controls the chemical reaction so that it is environmentally friendly, economical and efficient.

This breakthrough was achieved by experts from Covestro and the CAT Catalytic Center, a research institute jointly operated by the company and the RWTH Aachen. Experts had been searching for such a catalyst for decades.

Covestro Among the Three Finalists

“Team CO2”, which made it among the three finalists and presented its innovation on stage in Berlin, consists of Dr. Christoph Gürtler and Dr. Berit Stange from Covestro, as well as Professor Walter Leitner, who teaches and performs research at RWTH Aachen and the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion. The trio played a major role in the development and market launch of this innovative method. The German President’s Prize (or “Deutscher Zukunftspreis”) is handed out annually for outstanding achievements in technology and natural science that lead to market-ready products.

Avoiding Crude Oil as Central Resource

“We are very happy that we made it to the final round. The idea behind CO2 innovation fits in perfectly with the times Fossil sources, such as crude oil can no longer be the industry’s central resource if the world is heading towards a future that is low in greenhouse gases," said Covestro CEO Dr. Markus Steilemann. 

“The award has encouraged us to continue working intensively on developing innovative solutions for greater sustainability in many areas. Together with partners from the business and scientific community, we will continue to forge ahead with the development of alternative resources, such as CO2. As a chemicals and research location, Germany can make a name for itself in this field,” adds Steilemann.

Source: Covestro

Study Unveils New Chemical Payload Bearing Polymer Ideal for Medical Implants

Caltech scientists have developed a new kind of polymer that can carry a chemical payload as part of its molecular structure and release it in response to mechanical stress. The chemical system they have developed could one day be used to create medical implants that can release drugs into the body when triggered by something like ultrasound waves, they say.

Set of Polymer Chains Bonded to the Payload System

The new material consists of a set of polymer chains bonded to the payload system, creating a mechanically sensitive unit called a mechanophore. A so-called cascade reaction ejects the payload from the polymer. In simple terms, force applied to the polymer causes weak bonds in the mechanophore to rupture, spitting out an unstable intermediate molecule that promptly breaks down to release the attached payload.

Release of Coumarin Dye

In their paper, the authors demonstrate the release of a coumarin dye, an organic molecule with useful properties, but they say the polymer could be tailored to release a variety of molecules, including those with therapeutic qualities.

Releasing Drugs on Command

A material that can release drugs on command could be used to provide more precise treatment of some medical conditions, for example, a cancer therapy could deliver a drug directly to the intended target.

"The generality of this new platform is unique in that it allows, in principle, the mechanically triggered release of a wide range of cargo molecules," Robb says.

New System Can Be Used for Triggered Depolymerization

The system Robb and his colleagues have developed could also be tweaked for other purposes. He says that it is possible to create a polymer that depolymerizes or completely breaks down into small molecules, when subjected to stress. Alternatively, a polymer could be tailored to release a reporter molecule to signal locations in a structure that are under stress and could lead to a structural failure.

"We are actively working on expanding the design in a number of directions, to evaluate the scope of cargo release and for triggered depolymerization, which is particularly promising for stress amplification since it allows a single triggering event to generate many small molecules through a domino reaction," Robb says.

Source: Caltech

Toray creates world’s first porous carbon fiber with a nanosized continuous pore structure

Using this fiber as a support layer could lighten advanced membranes used in greenhouse gas separation and hydrogen production and make them more compact, thereby enhancing performance.

The company will keep pushing ahead with R&D for this new material to foster carbon recycling, collaborating with other entities in developing applications to sustainably tap hydrogen energy and shrink environmental footprints.

Absorption- and adsorption-based facilities conventionally separate carbon dioxide, biogas, hydrogen, and other gases. The issue with such setups, however, is that they are large and consume a lot of energy, resulting in heavy carbon dioxide emissions. Gas separation methods employing membranes have thus attracted considerable attention. But despite ongoing research, no membranes have yet combined satisfactory gas separation performance and durability.

Toray’s new material is chemically stable because it comprises carbon, and offers outstanding gas permeability. The material employs thin, flexible fibers, so when it is used to support gas membranes a module can house many of them. Modules can thus be compact and light. Such support makes it possible to combine a range of gas separation layers.

Toray looks to contribute to the swift commercialization of advanced separation membranes that are vital to materializing eco-friendly natural gas and biogas purification and hydrogen production.Toray innovated its new material by combining its outstanding polymer technology with its market share-leading carbon fiber technologies and water treatment and other separation membrane technologies.

Harnessing its polymer technology enabled the company to create a porous carbon fiber with uniformly continuous pores and carbon. It is possible to set nano- through micro-level pore sizes for porous structures. Another possibility is to create a hollow fiber-shaped porous carbon fiber in the center of a fiber.Prospective applications leveraging the excellent adsorption of Toray’s new material include electrode materials and catalyst carriers (base substances for fixing other substances) in high-performance batteries.

Toray will open its R&D Innovation Center for the Future in December this year. The new facility will serve as a global headquarters for strategic innovations by engaging with academic institutions and key partners from diverse fields. The company will collaborate with several partners in efforts leveraging its new material in a drive to commercialize more advanced gas separation membranes.

Under the Toray Group Sustainability Vision, the company looks to keep developing technologies that help materialize low-carbon economies by 2050 by contributing to resolutions of environmental, resources, and energy issues.

Source:TORAY

IEEE WIE Forum USA East Nov 21-23,ARLINGTON

The 5th Annual IEEE WIE Forum USA East Event will be held on November 21-23,2019 at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Arlington, VA , which will focus on developing and improving leadership skills and driving innovation for individuals at all stages of their careers. Attendees will have the opportunity to be educated, inspired, and empowered by presentations given by successful leaders, attend workshops, network with peers, learn ways to kickstart programs which excite and inspire the women engineers of the future. Registration Fee: 390 USD REGISTER @ https://lnkd.in/fHyCZri PATRONS SPONSORSHIP: An innovative selection of sponsorship packages have been put together for our 2019 program,ranging from Diamond $10K- Silver$1.5K level. CAREER FAIR (Nov 22) It is open to all technical career fields including (but not limited to) Aerospace Engg,Computer Engg ,Computer Science, Cyber Security, Data Scientists, Electrical Engg, Engg Management, Info Tech, Mechanical Engg,Manufacturing, and R & D. For Companies to be part of the fair it is only 600 dollars.A table and small area will be provided for companies to screen and do onsite recruitment. Discount:Contact me for special discount. Contact:Neeta Basantkumar Theordore (ateenjar@ieee.org)

New Method to Synthesize Degradable Polymers for Medical Applications

MIT chemists have devised a way to synthesize polymers that can break down more readily in the body and in the environment.

Ring-opening Metathesis Polymerization

A chemical reaction called ring-opening metathesis polymerization, or ROMP, is handy for building novel polymers for various uses such as nanofabrication, high-performance resins, and delivering drugs or imaging agents. However, one downside to this synthesis method is that the resulting polymers do not naturally break down in natural environments, such as inside the body.

Making Polymers More Degradable

The MIT research team has come up with a way to make those polymers more degradable by adding a novel type of building block to the backbone of the polymer. This new building block, or monomer, forms chemical bonds that can be broken down by weak acids, bases, and ions such as fluoride.

“We believe that this is the first general way to produce ROMP polymers with facile degradability under biologically relevant conditions,” says Jeremiah Johnson, an associate professor of chemistry at MIT and the senior author of the study. “The nice part is that it works using the standard ROMP workflow; you just need to sprinkle in the new monomer, making it very convenient.”

This building block could be incorporated into polymers for a wide variety of uses, including not only medical applications but also synthesis of industrial polymers that would break down more rapidly after use, the researchers say.

Non-degradability: The Issue at Hand

The most common building blocks of ROMP-generated polymers are molecules called norbornenes, which contain a ring structure that can be easily opened and strung together to form polymers. Molecules such as drugs or imaging agents can be added to norbornenes before the polymerization occurs.

Johnson’s lab has used this synthesis approach to create polymers with many different structures, including linear polymers, bottlebrush polymers, and star-shaped polymers. These novel materials could be used for delivering many cancer drugs at once or carrying imaging agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other types of imaging.

“It’s a very robust and powerful polymerization reaction,” Johnson says. “But one of the big downsides is that the backbone of the polymers produced entirely consists of carbon-carbon bonds, and as a result, the polymers are not readily degradable. That’s always been something we’ve kept in the backs of our minds when thinking about making polymers for the biomaterials space.”

Smaller Polymers, Easy Degradation

To circumvent that issue, Johnson’s lab has focused on developing small polymers, on the order of about 10 nanometers in diameter, which could be cleared from the body more easily than larger particles. Other chemists have tried to make the polymers degradable by using building blocks other than norbornenes, but these building blocks don’t polymerize as efficiently. It’s also more difficult to attach drugs or other molecules to them, and they often require harsh conditions to degrade.

“We prefer to continue to use norbornene as the molecule that enables us to polymerize these complex monomers,” Johnson says. “The dream has been to identify another type of monomer and add it as a co-monomer into a polymerization that already uses norbornene.”

The New Possible Solution

The researchers came upon a possible solution through work Shieh was doing on another project. He was looking for new ways to trigger drug release from polymers, when he synthesized a ring-containing molecule that is like norbornene but contains an oxygen-silicon-oxygen bond. The researchers discovered that this kind of ring, called a silyl ether, can also be opened and polymerized with the ROMP reaction, leading to polymers with oxygen-silicon-oxygen bonds that degrade more easily. Thus, instead of using it for drug release, the researchers decided to try to incorporate it into the polymer backbone to make it degradable.

They found that by simply adding the silyl-ether monomer in a 1:1 ratio with norbornene monomers, they could create similar polymer structures to what they have previously made, with the new monomer incorporated fairly uniformly throughout the backbone. But now, when exposed to a slightly acidic pH, around 6.5, the polymer chain begins to break apart.

“It’s quite simple,” Johnson says. “It’s a monomer we can add to widely used polymers to make them degradable. But as simple as that is, examples of such an approach are surprisingly rare.”

Faster Breakdown

In tests in mice, the researchers found that during the first week or two, the degradable polymers showed the same distribution through the body as the original polymers, but they began to break down soon after that. After six weeks, the concentrations of the new polymers in the body were between three and 10 times less than the concentrations of the original polymers, depending on the exact chemical composition of the silyl-ether monomers that the researchers used.

The findings suggest that adding this monomer to polymers for drug delivery or imaging could help them get cleared from the body more quickly.

Tuning the Breakdown of ROMP-based Polymers

“We are excited about the prospect of using this technology to precisely tune the breakdown of ROMP-based polymers in biological tissues, which we believe could be leveraged to control biodistribution, drug release kinetics, and many other features,” Johnson says.

The researchers have also started working on adding the new monomers to industrial resins, such as plastics or adhesives. They believe it would be economically feasible to incorporate these monomers into the manufacturing processes of industrial polymers, to make them more degradable, and they are working with Millipore-Sigma to commercialize this family of monomers and make them available for research.

Source: MIT

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New Process to Develop Bio-based Polyamide Using Terpenes

The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB is using a new, recently patented process to develop new polyamides from the terpene 3-carene, a residual material from the cellulose industry. The biobased polyamides Caramid-R® and Caramid-S® produced using this process represent a new class of polyamides with outstanding thermal properties. The production of the monomer for Caramid-S® was already successfully piloted in a 100-liter scale. The Fraunhofer researchers are presenting the new polyamides at the K trade fair (Hall 7.0, Stand SC01).

From Wood Waste to High-performance Polymers

The Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB has developed a sustainable alternative to petrochemically produced plastics using terpenes found in resin-rich wood. The natural substances are available from conifers such as pine, larch or spruce. In the production of pulp, in which wood is broken down to separate the cellulose fibers, the terpenes are isolated in large quantities as a by-product, turpentine oil.

In the joint project “TerPa – Terpenes as building blocks for biobased polyamides” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) through the German Agency for Renewable Resources (FNR), researchers of Fraunhofer IGB, Bio, Electro and Chemocatalysis BioCat, Straubing branch have succeeded in optimizing the synthesis of lactams from 3-carene and the subsequent polymerization to Caramid-R® and Caramid-S®, representatives of a new class of terpene-based polyamides. Recently, a patent was granted for the synthesis process of the new polyamides from terpenes.

One-pot Reaction Scale-up to 100 Liters

The conversion of 3-carene to the corresponding lactam is possible in four successive chemical reactions that require neither complex production facilities nor expensive reagents. The key steps to the polymer building blocks 3S- and 3R-caranlactam are the selective production of the intermediate 3S-caranketone and its selective rearrangement to the isomeric 3R-caranketone.

The special feature is that the conversions can take place as a one-vessel reaction sequence in a single reactor. "This offers the possibility to produce the lactams also in simple plants without a complex reactor cascade. It is not necessary to purify the intermediate products," explains Paul Stockmann, who developed and optimized the promising process.

The synthesis of the monomer for Caramid-S® has now been scaled to the 100-liter scale at the Fraunhofer Center for Chemical-Biotechnological Processes CBP, the Leuna branch of Fraunhofer IGB. "In this pilot production, we produced several kilograms of monomer, which allows the polymerization to be scaled to the kilogram scale," says Dr. Harald Strittmatter, who heads the TerPa project.

Excellent Thermal Properties

The chemical structure of the natural substance 3-carene, which has barely been used commercially to date and would be very difficult to access from petrochemical feedstocks, leads to new polyamides that contain cyclic structures along the polymer chain. Due to these rings and other substituents, Caramid-S® and Caramid-R® have exceptional thermal properties compared to standard polyamides: The softening temperatures (glass transition) are above 110 °C.

Caranlactams Expand Functional Properties Of Standard Polyamides
In addition, the scientists have converted the biobased lactams to copolymers with other commercially available monomers – laurolactam for PA12 and caprolactam for PA6. This enables the possibility of changing the properties such as the transparency of the polyamides PA6 and PA12, thus extending their application profile.

Currently, the Fraunhofer scientists are working on further improvements of the monomer synthesis which is essential for an economically viable polyamide. Furthermore, they are investigating the properties of the polymers in detail to identify potential applications and implement commercial use of the biopolyamides together with industrial partners.

Source: Fraunhofer Institute for IGB

Coca-Cola: First Ever Plastic Bottle Based on Recycled Marine Waste

Coca-Cola has unveiled the first ever sample bottle made using recovered and recycled marine plastics, demonstrating that, one day, even ocean debris could be used in recycled packaging for food or drinks. This sample is the first ever plastic bottle made using marine litter that has been successfully recycled and reused in food and drink packaging.

About 300 sample bottles have been produced using 25% recycled marine plastic, retrieved from the Mediterranean Sea and beaches. A small step for now, but the technology behind it has big potential.

Revolutionary Enhanced Recycling Technologies

The marine plastic bottle has been developed to show the transformational potential of revolutionary ‘enhanced recycling’ technologies, which can recycle previously used plastics of any quality back to the high-quality needed for food or drinks packaging.

Enhanced recycling technologies use innovative processes that break down the components of plastic and strip out impurities in lower-grade recyclables so they can be rebuilt as good as new. This means that lower-grade plastics that were often destined for incineration or landfill can now be given a new life. It also means more materials are available to make recycled content, reducing the amount of virgin PET needed from fossil fuels, and resulting in a lower carbon footprint.

The sample bottle is the result of a partnership between Ioniqa Technologies, Indorama Ventures, Mares Circulares (Circular Seas) and The Coca-Cola Company. Although enhanced recycling is still in its infancy, the partners produced the sample marine plastic bottle as a proof of concept for what the technology may achieve in time.

In the immediate term, enhanced recycling will be introduced at commercial scale using waste streams from existing recyclers, including previously unrecyclable plastics and lower-quality recyclables. From 2020, Coca-Cola plans to roll out this enhanced recycled content in some of its bottles.

Working Towards Zero Waste

Bruno van Gompel, Technical and Supply Chain Director, Coca-Cola Western Europe, says the potential for the technology is huge: “Enhanced recycling technologies are enormously exciting, not just for us but for industry and society at large. They accelerate the prospect of a closed-loop economy for plastic, which is why we are investing behind them. As these begin to scale, we will see all kinds of used plastics returned, as good as new, not just once but again and again, diverting waste streams from incineration and landfill.”

Tonnis Hooghoudt, CEO of Ioniqa Technologies, the Dutch company that developed the proprietary enhanced recycling technology, says: “The impact of enhanced recycling will be felt on a global scale: by working with Coca-Cola and Indorama to produce this bottle, we aim to show what this technology can deliver. Our new plant is now operational and we are bringing this technology to scale. In doing so, we aim to eliminate the concept of single use plastic and plastic waste altogether.”

Source: Coca-Cola