WILMINGTON, Del. — November 13, 2017 — DuPont Industrial Biosciences (DuPont) announced that Dr. Michael Saltzberg, global business director of DuPont Biomaterials, will participate in The Future of Materials Summit, beginning today in Luxembourg. Saltzberg will join other materials business leaders for a discussion on “Best Practices for New Materials’ Development,” led by Geoffrey Carr, science editor at The Economist and chair of the Summit.
As the leader of DuPont’s global biomaterials programs and business development, Saltzberg spearheads the development and commercialization of renewably sourced biochemicals and biomaterials based on plants rather than petroleum.
“Materials suppliers play a critical role in increasing the sustainability of supply chains across the industries that we serve, and we believe making high-performance and cost-efficient materials from plant-based feedstocks is part of the solution,” said Saltzberg. “I am looking forward to sharing the latest in DuPont’s biomaterials innovations with the group that The Economist has brought together for this Summit.”
One of DuPont’s core innovations in this space is Bio-PDO™ propanediol — a bio-based ingredient used in a variety of materials across a number of industries. DuPont™ Sorona® is one of those materials — a patented polymer that offers customers a more sustainable solution for fibers and other applications with better performance in key parameters than competing petroleum-based materials. Sorona is used around the world in the textile, carpeting, and automotive markets — bringing softness, crush resistance and stretch to a growing list of products, not to mention its superior life cycle compared to the petroleum-based products it often replaces.
In early 2016, DuPont partnered with Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) to launch a breakthrough process to produce a bio-based monomer — furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (FDME) — from a renewable feedstock. One of the first polymers under development is polytrimethylene furandicarboxylate (PTF), a novel polyester made by combining FDME and Bio-PDO™. PTF is a 100-percent renewable that — when used to make bottles and other beverage packages — substantially improves gas-barrier properties compared to other polyesters. This kind of innovation is central to DuPont’s approach: by developing this renewably sourced monomer, the beverage industry will be able to create effective packages using less polymer than is required for current designs, resulting in significant benefits for customers and the environment.
At the Summit, Dr. Saltzberg also will address DuPont’s research into the commercialization of a completely new way to make high-performance polymers directly from sugar. This novel process — as illustrated in this video — uses an enzymatic process that closely mimics the way nature builds polymers like cellulose. He also plans to speak to materials manufacturers’ responsibility to enable environmentally friendly end-of-life solutions, acknowledging that diverse applications and markets are best served by different technical solutions. DuPont’s biomaterials team is working hard to help ensure that end-use markets are developed for recycled materials. For instance, DuPont recently announced a collaboration with Unifi to create high-performance, renewably sourced garment insulation made in part with recycled material and Sorona polymer, offering leading apparel brands a new sustainable choice for cold-weather products.
The Future of Materials Summit — which runs through November 14 — will analyze the modern materials “ecosystem” from research and development, through supply chains, to business applications and end of use. The Economist is bringing together leading manufacturers, scientists, technologists and policymakers for a discussion intended to better understand what is happening, and to illuminate the role of novel materials in the manufacturing industries of the future.
DuPont’s industry-leading excellence in the biomaterials industry has received a number of accolades over the past year, including the Platts Global Energy “Breakthrough Solution of the Year” award for the development partnership with ADM; Frost & Sullivan’s award for 2017 European Company of the Year Award for bio-based materials; and, most recently, PLASTICS’ 2017 Innovation in Bioplastics Award.
Posted November 13, 2017
Source: DuPont Industrial Biosciences (DuPont)
