NEWS OF THE W EEK
ALEXANDER TULLO/C&EN (BOTH)
CARGILL, MATERIA LAUNCH NEW FIRM GREEN CHEMISTRY: Elevance will make specialty chemicals from vegetable oils
Shafer
Johnson
A
GRIBUSINESS GIANT Cargill and Materia, a
Pasadena, Calif., olefin metathesis specialist, have formed Elevance Renewable Sciences, which aims to make specialty chemicals out of renewable oils. The firm is being launched on its own with $40 million in funding from the private equity firm TPG. In olefin metathesis reactions, two olefins rearrange themselves around their double bonds to create two new olefins. For instance, metathesis is used to make propylene from butylene and ethylene. Elevance takes advantage of the double bonds found in triglycerides from sources such as soybean and canola oil, explains Andrew L. Shafer, the new company’s executive vice president of sales and market development. The triglycerides can be reacted with each other or with petrochemically derived olefins. “The range of products that we can make is really vast,” Shafer says. One example is 9-decenoic acid, which is used in flavors and fragrances but also has potential as a raw material for engineering polymers.
NEW LEADERSHIP FOR SAFETY BOARD CHEMICAL ACCIDENTS:
Increased staff and more outreach, investigations planned
CSB
J
Bresland
OHN BRESLAND GAINED Senate approval on March 14 to lead the Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). Bresland has been a board member since 2002; when the term of former chair Carolyn Merritt drew to a close last summer, he was nominated for an additional five-year term, this time to head CSB, an independent federal agency charged with investigating chemical accidents. Among his goals for CSB, Bresland tells C&EN he hopes to increase the board’s 40-member staff, as well as the number of investigators and investigations. He would like to see its $10 million annual budget grow by 10%. The board’s authority should also be clarified, he says, to ensure it has power to enter a site and secure evidence immediately after an accident. There have been incidents, he notes, where company, state, and local officials have blocked CSB investigators. The board selects about five to eight accidents annuWWW.C E N- ONLI NE .ORG
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Elevance CEO K’Lynne Johnson, who earlier led BP’s α-olefins and nitriles business, says the new company occupies an unprecedented position in the chemical industry. “We are the bridge between petrochemicals and renewables,” she claims. Elevance will market metathesis-based waxes that Cargill now sells under the NatureWax name. Beyond this effort, Johnson sees three other platforms for the technology. The closest to commercialization are functional oils for paints, adhesives, inks, and personal care. The company is also investigating antimicrobials for agricultural and industrial applications, and it plans to launch lubricants and additive products. Elevance will seek development partnerships with companies in these end markets and manufacturing partnerships with specialty chemical companies that will make its products. It expects $1 billion in sales by 2016. The new company is a result of a four-year-old collaboration between Cargill and Materia. Other Cargill efforts in biobased materials include soybean-oil-based polyols, the NatureWorks polylactic acid joint venture with Teijin, and a deal with Codexis to develop the chemical building block 3-hydroxypropionic acid. Materia’s olefin metathesis technology was developed by Nobel Laureate Robert H. Grubbs, professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology. Among the companies using its technology are Eisai for a cancer drug, Syngenta for pesticides, and Lanxess for hydrogenated nitrile butadiene rubber.—ALEX TULLO
ally to investigate. Some are at small factories or even propane explosions at convenience stores; others are huge, such as the explosions at the BP refinery in Texas and at the sugar refinery in Georgia, both of which killed more than a dozen workers (C&EN, Nov. 6, 2006, page 10; C&EN, Feb. 18, page 5). Bresland also aims to increase CSB’s outreach, particularly by producing more safety videos based on CSB investigations. He underscores the influence of these videos: More than 1 million viewers have seen them on the Internet, and some 60,000 safety DVDs have been sought by industry and labor unions. Before joining CSB, Bresland led a New Jersey chemical process safety consulting firm and was a staff consultant to the Center for Chemical Process Safety of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). Until August 2000, he was environmental risk management director for Honeywell International, where he was responsible for compliance regulations at 20 U.S. facilities. His Honeywell career stretches back 35 years, when he worked in process engineering, environmental compliance, project management, and manufacturing. He was also plant manager of Honeywell’s phenol and acetone manufacturing plant in Philadelphia. Bresland holds degrees in chemistry from Londonderry Technical College in Northern Ireland and Salford University in England. He is a member of AIChE and the American Chemical Society.—JEFF JOHNSON
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