‘Tis the season for industry awards and we might see some biobased chemicals/materials this year crossing somebody’s red, or in this instance, green carpet.

DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products Company announced last week the launch of its Innovation Award program for companies using its Zemea propanediol (1,3 PDO) in their cosmetic and personal care ingredients or formulations.

The bio-based 1,3 PDO is made from corn sugar through fermentation and can be an alternative to petroleum-based glycols and glycerin (not that there are many synthetic glycerin out there) for use in cosmetics and personal care.

Eligible companies have either commercialized a finished product for retail or launched another ingredient that contains Zemea from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2012. Nominations are being accepted between January 3 and January 31, 2013, and the winning company will be announced on February 25, to coincide with the Personal Care Products Council annual meeting in Florida.

The winning company will receive an engraved plaque and a contribution of $1,500 on the winner’s behalf to an approved charity of its choice (I approve that idea but maybe a bigger amount might be better…).

Nomination Form in this link.

SPI Bioplastics Council, a group of SPI (the Plastics Industry Trade Association), announced this week that it has launched its first annual Innovation in Bioplastics Award, which will recognize outstanding innovation in unique and creative application of bioplastics materials. Of course SPI has to define what bioplastic means to them to be able to get nominated.

Applications will be accepted through March 31, 2013, and the award winner will be recognized at the June 2013 Biopolymers Symposium in Chicago, Illinois. The award will include a featured speaking opportunity and free exhibit space at the symposium, extensive press coverage to over 200 media outlets, free award promotion banner ad on the Bioplastics Council website for one year, and recognition at future Council events.

That’s quite generous, don’t you think? The bioplastic council said the award provides platform to showcase success bioplastic stories, allow industry leaders to be recognized by their peers, and highlight novel, game-changing achievements in the bioplastics industry.

Application form can be downloaded in this link.

Finally, the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Green Chemistry Institute announced its 2013 Pharmaceutical Roundtable Research Grant for Greener Solvent Research in partnership with its members in the pharmaceutical industry such as Amgen, Astrazeneca, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Codexis, Dr. Reddy’s, DSM Pharmaceutical Products, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, and Sanofi.

The ACS GCI Pharmaceutical Roundtable is seeking a 1 year R&D commitment to assist the Roundtable’s greener solvents initiative. The R&D will focused on developing greener solvents as potential replacements for polar aprotic solvents such as DMF, NMP and DMAc — which are said to be widely used in the industry but pose significant reproductive health hazards.

Public and private institutions of higher education worldwide are invited to submit proposals, which should include specific details of the solvent and plans for a comparative performance analysis relative to DMF, NMP and DMAc (sorry, I am not familiar with these solvents myself so I can’t really comment on these for now…).

One grant will be awarded up to $100,000 for a grant period of 12 months. Deadline for receipt of proposals is January 15, 2013 at 5pm EDT (time is running out so better get to it fast!).

The winner of the grant will be notified by April 15 and the research is expected to start in the principal investigator’s lab by July 2013.

More information about the grant on this link.

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A little bit unrelated to the main story but the blog just wanted to congratulate the recipients of a $10m grant from the US Department of Energy, which aims to develop technologies to convert biomass into advanced biofuels and bio-based products

• J. Craig Venter Institute (up to $1.2m): This project will develop new technologies to produce enzymes that more efficiently deconstruct biomass to make biofuel. This work will be performed in collaboration with La Jolla, California-based Synthetic Genomics, Inc.

• Novozymes (up to $2.5m): Novozymes will find new sources of enzymes which can be targeted to deliver more cost-effective solutions for deconstructing biomass into processable components.

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (up to $2.4m): The goal of this project is to increase the production of fuel molecules in fungi growing on lignocellulosic hydrolysate.

• Texas AgriLife Research (up to $2.4m): This project will employ technology to develop a novel and integrated platform for converting lignin, a component of all lignocellulosic material, into biofuel precursors. The team includes scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology, University of British Columbia, Washington State University, and Texas A&M University.

• Lygos (up to $1.8m): The overall goal of this project is to develop efficient, inexpensive methods and tools to convert biomass into common and specialty chemicals. This work will be performed in collaboration with San Francisco-based TeselaGen Biotech.