BUSINESS
CAPTURING CARBON
NOVOM ER
chain breaks up and sublimates. Used as a binder, it can “burn off” without a trace when it is no longer needed. It is thus ideally suited for applications such as photolithogNovomer aims to turn raphy, the technology used to draw lines CARBON DIOXIDE into something useful tens-of-nanometers wide on integrated circuits. Novomer is also looking at applications in capacitors, resistors, printing binders, and in binding IT SOUNDS TOO GOOD to be diamonds onto saw blades. true. Ithaca, N.Y.-based start-up Novomer could make coatNovomer has a technology that ings out of polypropylene carreacts carbon dioxide with other bonate, but Hamilton says the molecules, locking it into a polycompany isn’t ready to tackle mer backbone and putting it to such large-volume applications better use than as an atmospherejust yet. “But NB-180 based on warming gas. The company says burn-off is a great product for the anti-greenhouse-gas bonus of us because it is an immediate its chemistry has drawn attention, market need,” he says. but it would rather focus its efforts In the future, the company on making polymers that people will tackle polyethylene carwant to buy. bonate, which Hamilton says At the heart of Novomer’s techhas good oxygen-barrier propnology are catalysts developed by erties and is suitable for makGeoffrey W. Coates, a chemistry LOCKED UP ing plastic films. He says the professor at Cornell University. CO2 from burning coal and made Novomer polymers polymer may be an ideal gasThe catalysts are based on transition metplastic, we would make orders incorporate barrier laminate for use with als and can break open the highly stable of magnitude more plastic than carbon dioxide as polyethylene terephthalate in CO2 molecule, enabling it to polymerize the world currently makes,” he a raw material. food and beverage packaging, explains. Indeed, the Intergovernwith epoxide groups. For example, CO2 such as soda bottles. mental Panel on Climate Change combines with ethylene oxide to make the The company is also exsays industrial use of CO2, includpolymer polyethylene carbonate and with ploring the properties of polycyclohexene propylene oxide to make polypropylene ing as a reactant to make urea, is about 115 carbonate, the result of polymerizing cycarbonate. These polymers have about million metric tons per year, only 0.5% of clohexene oxide and carbon dioxide. And 50% and 43% CO2 content by weight, total anthropogenic emissions. it is looking into epoxides derived from Novomer’s president, Charles Hamilrespectively. biological sources, such as ethylene oxide ton, says the main benefit of using CO2 is Coates began the research that led to made from ethanol. the catalysts when he arrived at Cornell in its availability. “CO2 is a great raw material Novomer can use carbon monoxide as a 1997, after previously studying olefin catalin that it is very cheap,” he says. “In some building block as well. Hamilton says the carysis during his graduate studies at Stanford cases you can get paid to use it.” bonylation of carbon monoxide with epoxUniversity and during his postdoctoral John J. Murphy, vice president of the ides yields lactones that can be used to make fellowship with Nobel Laureate Robert H. Spring House, Pa.-based consulting firm polyesters such as polyhydroxybutyrate. Grubbs at California Institute of Technolthe Catalyst Group, stops just short of ogy. He says the work of Donald J. Darenssaying that polymerizing CO2 is the Holy bourg at Texas A&M University inspired Grail. “If you can unlock such an inert molTHE COMPANY has generated some comhim. “One of his papers really excited me ecule and do something with it other than mercial interest. Last October, Novomer about using carbon dioxide as a building injecting it into aquifers, then you are onto raised $6.6 million in equity financing. block,” Coates says. something,” Murphy says. But he notes a DSM Venturing, the venture capital arm of In 1998, Coates’s group reported a stumbling block for many a new material: the Dutch polymers and chemicals maker, catalyst, β-diiminate zinc acetate, that “Does the market really need the product?” participated in the round. “They are a great polymerizes CO2 and epoxides. In 2003, This is why, instead of saving the world, partner for us,” Hamilton says. “They have Novomer is trying to match the properties the scale and the application development the group published a paper on salen cobalt of its polymers to market needs. “Ultiexperience.” Novomer is also collaborating carboxylate complexes, which Coates says mately, what determines the success of the with Eastman Kodak on new polymers. increased the number of epoxides commaterials is their performance and price,” Hamilton says Novomer is benefiting patible with CO2. He and two colleagues Hamilton says. from fortuitous timing. “The board rooms of founded Novomer in 2004. The company’s first major commercial every major chemical company in the world Although the notion of fighting global launch is a grade of polypropylene carare focused on what happens when petrowarming has prompted many people to bonate called NB-180, which stands for leum runs out,” he says. “Think of our chemcontact the company, Coates stresses that Novomer Binder 180 ºC, Hamilton says. At istry as extending the chemistry of polymers his technology is no panacea; humans genthat relatively low temperature, the polymer beyond the petroleum era.”—ALEX TULLO erate way too much CO2. “If we took all the WWW.C E N- ONLI NE .ORG
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