Akron consortium gets federal polymer grant

The US Department of Commerce, through the Economic Development Administration, has awarded $51 million to the Sustainable Polymers Tech Hub—an Akron, Ohio–based consortium—to bolster the development of new polymer technologies. The consortium includes firms such as BioVerde, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Huntsman, and Flexsys America, as well as the University of Akron. The consortium will work on seven projects, which includes the production scale-up of biobased butadiene, the development of carbon nanotube reinforcement of polymers, and the commercializaton of an environmentally safe replacement for N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6PPD), which is used in tire compounds to protect against degradation from ozone.