Kevin Kosh
CHEN PR, Inc.
781-672-3111 kkosh@chenpr.com
NOVOMER NEWS
05/02/07Professor Geoffrey Coates and Novomer Featured in Chemical and Engineering News Cover Story on Carbon Dioxide
In its cover story entitled “What Can we Do with CO2?” published in Chemical and Engineering News, the national trade magazine of the American Chemical Society, the pioneering work of Professor Geoff Coates and Novomer is featured as follows:
“Geoffrey W. Coates and his group at Cornell University have spent a decade developing catalysts to incorporate CO2 into polymers. Two successes, building on work by other groups dating to the late 1960s, are β-diiminate zinc acetate and salen cobalt carboxylate complexes. These catalysts promote alternating copolymerization of various epoxides with CO2 to make biodegradable aliphatic polycarbonates.
“The work has been fruitful enough for Coates and former graduate student Scott D. Allen to start a company called Novomer, located in Ithaca, N.Y., to make specialty polymers using their catalysts. The polymers, which contain 30-50% CO2 by weight, have gas-barrier and degradation properties that make them attractive for food packaging, foam-casting to make automotive parts, and electronics processing applications, Coates said. The polymers also can be used to replace propylene oxide segments in polyurethane foams, which would help cut costs. The foams are used for insulation and seat cushions, among other applications.
"’About 150 million tons of plastics is produced globally in a year, and most of it is nonbiodegradable and from energy-intensive processes that use petroleum-based feedstocks,’" Coates told C&EN. ‘With sustainability a topic of growing importance, we are drawing upon naturally occurring monomers to synthesize biodegradable plastics.’ In one example, Coates and coworkers devised a strategy to use limonene oxide derived from citrus fruit waste as a potential epoxide monomer for copolymerization with CO2. Other research in progress involves developing a catalytic system that can use untreated CO2 directly from industrial waste streams to make polymers.
“Novomer is competing against existing polycarbonate producers, but the company believes its greener approach to reduce energy use, feedstock costs, and waste could help bring down production costs. Novomer currently is customizing materials for clients, such as Kodak, and working to scale up polymer production.
“Coates's group also is exploring applications in carbon monoxide chemistry that have been highlighted in two recent journal papers and also are being considered for commercialization by Novomer. In one paper, the researchers describe the first example of converting simple epoxides and CO into a variety of succinic anhydrides (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2007, 129, 4948). These one-pot reactions utilize an aluminum-cobalt catalyst to mediate a tandem double carbonylation of the epoxides. "The work has important implications for biodegradable polyesters, as succinic anhydrides are important feedstocks for those materials," Coates said.
“A second paper summarizes work in Coates's group and other groups that utilizes homogeneous catalysts for reacting CO with heterocycles, such as epoxides, aziridines, lactones, and oxazolines (Chem. Commun. 2007, 657). Some of the possibilities the Cornell chemists have explored include ring-expansion carbonylations, which yield β-lactone monomers that can be used to make polyesters.”
About Novomer
Novomer (www.novomer.com) is a revolutionary new materials company pioneering a family of low-cost, high-performance, green plastics, polymers and other chemicals. Founded in 2004 by technology commercialization firm KensaGroup, Dr. Geoffrey Coates and Dr. Scott Allen, the company is based on pioneering catalysts developed at Cornell University. Novomer's groundbreaking technology allows carbon dioxide and other renewable materials to be cost-effectively transformed into polymers, plastics and other chemicals for a wide variety of industrial markets. The company is partnered with equity investors Flagship Ventures, Physic Ventures, and DSM Venturing and has received support from the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.