Novomer Wins ICIS Award for Innovation with Best Environmental Benefit

Novomer Inc., a sustainable materials company pioneering a family of high-performance plastics, polymers and other chemicals from renewable feedstocks such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) and carbon monoxide (CO), today announced that it was selected for a prestigious 2011 ICIS Innovation Award. Lauded as the “Innovation with Best Environmental Benefit,” the company’s revolutionary technology was recognized for using CO₂ as raw material to create high-performance polyols for coatings, adhesives, foams, composites and surfactant applications.

The award continues tremendous momentum for Novomer in 2011, having been named among the MIT Tech Review 50 Most Innovative Companies, GoingGreen Global 200 and winning the InformexUSA Profiles in Sustainability Award. Additionally, the company is on track to have its first commercial products enter the coatings market in 2012, a direct result of scale up and applications development efforts supported by more than $20M dollars from the US Department of Energy and numerous industrial partners.

ICIS, the leading global provider of news and information for the chemical and energy sectors, designed the Innovation Awards to recognize those companies that have made significant steps forward in technological and business innovation, with tangible results emerging during 2010 and the earlier part of this year. Celebrating its 8th year, the Awards are open to companies around the world, and judged by a panel of five leading industry experts. In reflecting on this year’s Awards, program founder and Global Editor at ICIS, John Baker stated, “the Awards continue to highlight the best the chemical industry has to offer in the way of innovation and providing solutions to society’s needs.”

“We thank the ICIS organization and the judges for this recognition, and echo their enthusiasm for the state of, and potential for, innovations that can truly have a meaningful, positive impact on the environmental footprint of industrial products,” said Peter Shepard, Novomer Executive Vice President. “Novomer’s innovation is a revolutionary advancement which delivers high performance, cost competitive, sustainable products. We are excited to be on the cusp of commercially launching our first products in coatings early next year. We also expect, based on the flexibility and adaptability of Novomer’s technology, to launch products into other related applications and markets soon thereafter.”

The core to Novomer's innovation is a highly active and selective catalyst that allows CO₂, a plentiful and low cost greenhouse gas, to react with commodity petrochemicals to form aliphatic polycarbonate polyols and polymers (APCs). In addition, Novomer has developed proprietary technology encompassing the use of chain transfer agents to precisely control the production of low molecular weight APC polyols for a wide range of industrial and specialty applications. Novomer's products contain up to 50% CO₂ by weight and are produced at low temperature and pressure, yielding significant environmental benefits relative to competing materials. From a performance perspective, when compared to traditional plastics, Novomer’s CO₂ based thermoplastic polymers have mechanical and barrier properties that make them attractive in a variety of flexible and rigid packaging applications. In addition, Novomer’s CO₂ based polyols are well suited as resins for food and beverage can coatings and linings, coil coating, and automotive and industrial finishes. Although still early in the development phase,  Novomer polyols have already shown promise in a range of composite resin, adhesive, and polyurethane foam applications. 

About Novomer

Novomer (www.novomer.com) is a revolutionary new materials company pioneering a family of low-cost, high-performance, sustainable plastics, polymers and other chemicals. Novomer's groundbreaking technologies allow carbon dioxide and other renewable feedstocks to be cost-effectively transformed into polymers, plastics and other chemicals for a wide variety of industrial markets. The company is partnered with equity investors Flagship Ventures, Physic Ventures, OVP Venture Partners, DSM Venturing and KensaGroup, and has received support from the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the State of New York.

Source:  www.novomer.com