In 2020, Cargill licensed a process from Procter & Gamble that converts lactic acid into acrylic acid with an eye toward making biobased polyacrylic acid, the superabsorbent polymer used in diapers. Zullo says Cargill is moving forward on acrylic acid but did not provide details. In addition to learning from the success of Novamont’s facility, Cargill has taken lessons from other attempts to bring biobased succinic acid to market, Zullo says.
by Craig Bettenhausen | June 10, 2021
The company is looking to build an acrylics recycling facility in Europe and a test facility in Osaka, Japan, with local partner Microwave Chemical. Birla Carbon plans to produce carbon black, a tire ingredient, with carbonaceous raw materials from the UK firm Circtec. Circtec will get the materials from a tire pyrolysis plant it plans to build in the Netherlands.
May 27, 2021
The unit makes acrylic, urethane, rubber, butyl, and epoxy adhesives for applications such as flexible packaging, wood bonding, and roofing. Ashland says it wants to focus on chemicals for pharmaceuticals, personal care, and coatings. The company sold its maleic anhydride business to AOC last year and bought Schülke & Mayr’s personal care business earlier this year.
by Alexander H. Tullo | May 27, 2021
Silver found that when he made an acrylate copolymer in a particular way, it formed a suspension of microscopic spheres that were cross-linked to one another. Surprisingly, the microspheres didn’t dissolve in solution but instead swelled to twice their original size. The microspheres didn’t clump when they were sprayed onto or coated a surface.
by Bethany Halford | May 22, 2021
The Arkema business has acrylic resin sales of more than $600 million annually. Trinseo says the move follows a portfolio review that recommended acrylic resins as an attractive "adjacent chemistry" to its core business in styrenics such as acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene resin. As part of the review, Trinseo plans to divest its synthetic rubber business. 23 H.B.
by Alexander H. Tullo | May 10, 2021
Celanese, for example, declared force majeure—meaning it might not be able to fulfill its contracts—for a host of products, including acetic acid, vinyl acetate, and vinyl and acrylic emulsions. OQ Chemicals shut down its Bay City, Texas, site and declared force majeure for oxo alcohols, aldehydes, acids, and esters.
by Alexander H. Tullo | March 24, 2021
Fuller’s global business director for health and beauty, says cyanoacrylates and other acrylates are the second-largest engineering adhesives category, after silicones. Since Coover’s day, cyanoacrylates have been synthesized via the Knoevenagel condensation, in which an alkyl cyanoacetate and formaldehyde react in the presence of a basic catalyst.
by Michael McCoy | March 24, 2021
—Business Roundup “” SK Global Chemical and Zhejiang Satellite plan to build a $175 million plant in Lianyungang, China, for the packaging polymer ethylene acrylic acid (EAA). SK became an EAA producer when it bought Dow’s business in 2017. DMC Biotechnologies, a US start-up, says it has demonstrated at full scale its microbial fermentation process for making the amino acid l-alanine at the Leuna, Germany, site of its partner, EW Biotech.
March 20, 2021
Most of our fabric today—T-shirts, furniture, carpets—is some form of polyester blended with cotton or acrylic or spandex. This makes it really hard to recycle. Ambercycle is developing an advanced recycling process for these textiles. Old garments come into the process and are converted to their initial constituents, and those molecules can be used to make the same garments.
by Prachi Patel, special to C&EN | March 14, 2021