DuPont and Archer Daniels win Bioplastics Award

DuPont Industrial Biosciences and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are joint winners of the 2017 Innovation in Bioplastics Award.

The award is given out by the Bioplastics Council, a division of the Plastics Industry Association.

Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont and ADM of Chicago won for what DuPont called a “groundbreaking process” to produce furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (FDME), a biobased monomer, from fructose.

The technological development has the potential to expand the materials landscape in the 21st century with high-performance renewable materials, DuPont said, with applications in packaging, textiles, engineering plastics, and many other industries.

FDME is a high-purity derivative of furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), one of the 12 building blocks identified by the U.S. Department of Energy, which can be converted into a number of high-value, bio-based chemicals or materials that can deliver high performance in a number of applications. Bio-based FDME has long been sought-after and researched, but has not yet been available at commercial scale and at reasonable cost. The technology developed by DuPont and ADM is a more efficient and simple process than traditional conversion approaches and results in higher yields, lower energy usage, lower capital expenditures, and better performance, DuPont said.

“This molecule is a game-changing platform technology,” said Michael Saltzberg, global business director for biomaterials at DuPont. “It will enable cost-efficient production of a variety of renewable, high-performance chemicals and polymers with applications across a broad range of industries – including textiles, auto parts, food packaging and more.”