Biobased chemicals boom with multiple marquee collaborations

Several firms announced plans for biobased chemicals in the week leading up to the 2022 Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference, held in Washington, DC, March 16–18. Asahi Kasei will commercialize nylon 6,6 made with precursor hexamethylenediamine from the industrial biotech firm Genomatica. The companies say their first target market will be parts and textiles for the auto and electronics industries. Meanwhile, Sabic will work with Kraton to produce styrenic block copolymers from butadiene made from wood-pulp waste. The firms say using this route rather than petroleum-based technologies reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 4 kg of CO₂ per kilogram of polymer produced. And Mitsubishi Chemical and the trading arm of Toyota are evaluating making biobased ethylene, propylene, and derivatives from ethanol. At the conference, numerous biobased fuel and chemical companies presented plans to “defossilize” the transportation and materials sectors by using ethanol as a building block molecule. Existing corn-based ethanol production has a mixed record on CO₂ emissions, but panelists expressed confidence that greener “second-generation” ethanol, derived from cellulose and waste, will be commercial as soon as this year.