Some fleeting cool news from DuPont

DuPont has big news, and this time it’s not about mergers or job cuts.
In a recent announcement (a last hurrah before officially becoming DowDuPont, maybe?), Dupont Industrial Biosciences has said that it and leading agricultural processor Archer Daniels Midland Company have made a breakthrough in developing a molecule that could revolutionize the production of renewable materials.
That means it’ll affect industries like packaging, textiles and engineering plastics.
“This molecule is a game-changing platform technology,” said Simon Herriot, global business director for DuPont’s biomaterials, in a release.
It’s called furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (let’s go with FDME) and it’s made from fructose.
“It has long been sought-after and researched, but has not yet been available at commercial scale and reasonable cost,” the release said.
But that could all change now. This new way to make FDME streamlines everything and produces higher yields, uses less energy and is less expensive to make than previous ways of developing it.
So far the guinea pig for using FDME is a polymer called polytrimethylene furandicarboxylate (PTF), a polyester made by DuPont that can be used for soda bottles. With FDME, the new polymer is 100 percent recyclable and renewable, and it significantly improves gas-barrier capabilities, so sodas would stay fizzier on the shelf longer.
DuPont and Archer Daniels Midland are in the beginning stages of bringing FDME to market, FYI, the release said.
And now for the bad news, FWIW: The two companies are going to build a 60-ton-per-year FDME plant, but it’s not in Delaware. Instead, the plant will be in Decatur, Ill.