Green Chemicals Blog

CSM, the parent company of lactic acid producer Purac, announced yesterday its new growth strategy for 2013-2016 starting with a new company name called Corbion. The new name and strategy marks the company’s transformation from a bakery ingredients supplier to a leading biobased products provider focusing on biobased food ingredients and biochemicals. In biochemicals, the … Continue reading »

As I’ve tweeted yesterday, there are so many press releases coming out this week because of  ongoing two big conferences — BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and the ACS Green Chemistry & Engineering conference. Myriant already announced their on-spec bio-succinic acid production at its Louisiana plant while Gevo reported that it has restarted its … Continue reading »

While I’m working on writing more posts from yesterday’s several press announcements, here is a recently recorded live stream video from the American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACSGCI) conference, which is currently being held this week in Maryland, USA. The broadcast featured panelists that include: James E. Jackson, Professor of Chemistry at Michigan State … Continue reading »

I have been tinkering on improving the website and so my apologies for those who have received two press release posts today. Those were some experimental sections I have been working on. In the meantime, let’s go back to our normal post routine. Biobased glycols producer Global Bio-chem Technology (GBT) Group of Hongkong recently announced … Continue reading »

Novamont announced yesterday the launch of their first product under the 4th generation Mater-Bi® line of biodegradable and compostable bioplastics. Unlike the first three generations, the 4th one has monomer components that will use biomass. Novamont said there will be two innovative technologies will enable the company to produce key monomers from renewable resources: A) … Continue reading »

News keep coming this week, and this last one is from Codexis on its fatty alcohol project with engineering firm Chemtex, a company of Italy’s M&G Group. Codexis announced its successful scale-up in the production of their CodeXol® detergent alcohols using cellulosic sugars produced using Chemtex’s PROESA® cellulosic sugar technology and Codexis’ CodeXyme® 4X cellulase … Continue reading »

Finnish pulp and paper company UPM has partnered with US cellulosic sugar developer Renmatix to further develop Renmatix’s water-based Plantrose process to convert woody biomass into low-cost sugar intermediates for subsequent downstream processing into biochemicals. The companies said the partnership’s long-term goal is to offer cost-competitive biobased alternatives to select petrochemicals on an industrial scale. … Continue reading »

Myriant said it has successfully produced commercial-grade biobased BDO and tetrahydrofuran (THF) at JM Davy’s facility at Teesside, England, using bio-succinic acid supplied by Myriant and processed with the JM Davy BDO/THF production technology.

The biobased BDO produced reportedly has an overall carbon efficiency of 87%, which Myriant said is substantially better than the carbon efficiency achieved in the direct fermentation route to bio-BDO. The products including THF and gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) are also said to be competitive from a cost and quality point of view compared to petroleum-based BDO/THF/GBL.
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BioAmber just announced last week its partnership with Brenntag for the distribution of its biobased succinic acid and derivatives in the Americas, and now the company announced another distribution partnership, this time with IMCD Group, targeting markets in the Benelux, France, Iberia, Germany, Poland, South East Europe, Switzerland, the UK and Ireland. The distribution deal … Continue reading »

France-based METabolic EXplorer has been going through a lot of challenges lately especially with their recent restructuring (27 employees were laid off and the blog communicated with one of them) as well as the delay in the company’s biobased 1,3 propanediol (PDO) construction in Malaysia. Last March, the company noted a tough 2012 performance although … Continue reading »

DESCA evaluates green chemistry incubator The Delaware Sustainable Chemistry Alliance (DESCA) has formally begun the evaluation process for establishing a regional green chemistry incubator. DESCA is concurrently benchmarking and developing several business models, sources of financing, external resources for outsourced services, and evaluating and comparing real estate options. DESCA anticipates completion of the formal evaluation … Continue reading »

France-based Global Bioenergies is stepping up its biobased isobutene development from laboratory to industrial scale and it has partnered with ARD, a specialist in the up-scaling of fermentation processes; specialty chemical firm Arkema, and two CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) laboratories IRCELYON and UCCS. Global Bioenergies is now scaling up its 42-liter laboratory … Continue reading »

Compilation of tweets and stories from the Plant Bio-Industrial Oils Workshop held in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on May 6-7, 2013. Continue reading »