Polyurethanes Converting
Polyurethanes Converting plastic waste into performance products The Advanced upcycling start-up Novoloop (Menlo Park, CA, USA) is pioneering the chemical transformation of plastic waste into high-performance chemicals and materials. The company’s proprietary process technology, ATOD (Accelerated Thermal Oxidative Decomposition), breaks down polyethylene into chemical building blocks that can be synthesized into high-value products. Polyethylene is the most widely used plastic today yet only 9 % is recycled and virtually none is upcycled. The start-up has raised USD 11 million in Series A financing led by Envisioning Partners (Seoul, South Korea) with participation from Valo Ventures (Palo Alto, CA, USA) and Bemis Associates (Shirley, MA, USA); earlier investors who joined the round included SOSV (Princeton, NJ, USA), Mistletoe (Tokyo, Japan), and TIME Ventures (San Francisco, CA, USA). The first product based on Novoloop’s ATOD process is Oistre , a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) for use in highperformance applications such as footwear, apparel, sporting goods, automotive, and electronics. Oistre is the first TPU made from post-consumer polyethylene waste that matches the performance characteristics of virgin TPUs made from petrochemicals. At the same time, Oistre’s carbon footprint is up to 46 % smaller than conventional TPUs and uses up to 50 % upcycled content from post-consumer plastic waste and. “What really compelled us to lead the investment round is that Novoloop has found product-market fit,” said June Cha, Partner of Envisioning Partners. “Novoloop has proven that Oistre has a wide range of applications in the market even at their early stage”. Novoloop’s technology can upcycle carbon content found in common plastic waste like grocery bags, packaging, and agricultural plastics that is too low value for material recovery facilities to bale and sell. Instead, the plastics go into landfills or incinerators today. Novoloop’s ATOD technology aims to increase commercial demand for waste polyethylene. “Plastics are not going away anytime soon, so we need to innovate to close the gap between what is produced and what is repurposed. After years of technology development, we’re thrilled to announce backing by high-calibre investors and partners to commercialize this much-needed technology”, said Novoloop Co-founder and CEO Miranda Wang. “With this funding, we look forward to completing crucial pilot scale-ups and commercializing our process technology to make a lasting impact. Our team is excited to lead the circular economy revolution for plastics”, said Novoloop Cofounder and COO Jeanny Yao. Novoloop is also announcing the company’s new partnership with Bemis Associates, the leader in apparel bonding solutions such as seam tapes, which can be found in high-performance outerwear. Together, the companies will introduce Oistre into the Bemis product portfolio as a first step to replace virgin petroleum-based thermoplastic polyurethane. “We are extremely excited to partner with Novoloop”, said Bemis Director of Sustainability Ben Howard. “Novoloop’s technology is a major breakthrough for our supply chain. Scaling it will be a huge step in shifting away from virgin petroleum sources and reducing our products’ carbon footprints”. Novoloop is currently sampling and taking pre-orders for Oistre 65A, a soft grade polyester TPU for injection moulding especially suitable for footwear applications. Higher durometre grades of Oistre TPU will be introduced soon. AT www.novoloop.com All photos courtesy Novoloop Inc. 50 bioplastics MAGAZINE [02/22] Vol. 17
Patent situation Europe and USA are leading innovation in plastic recycling and alternative plastics globally, patent data shows Report From a global perspective, Europe and the USA are leading innovation in plastic recycling and alternative plastics technologies, i.e. renewable carbon plastics, a new study published in October by the European Patent Office (EPO, headquartered in Munich, Germany) shows. Europe and the USA each accounted for 30 % of patenting activity worldwide in these sectors between 2010 and 2019, or 60 % combined. Within Europe, Germany posted the highest share of patent activity in both plastic recycling and bioplastic technologies (8 % of global total), while France, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium stand out for their higher specialisation in these fields. Titled Patents for tomorrow’s plastics: Global innovation trends in recycling, circular design and alternative sources [1], the study presents a comprehensive analysis of the innovation trends for the period 2010 to 2019 that are driving the transition to a circular economy for plastics. The report looks at the number of international patent families (IPFs), each of which represents an invention for which patent applications have been filed at two or more patent offices worldwide (so-called high-value inventions). It aims to provide a guide for business leaders and policymakers to direct resources towards promising technologies, to assess their comparative advantage at different stages of the value chain, and to highlight innovative companies and institutions that could contribute to long-term sustainable growth. Chemical and biological recycling methods with the highest number of patents The study highlights that of all recycling technologies, the fields of chemical and biological recycling methods generated the highest level of patenting activity in the period under review. These methods accounted for 9,000 IPFs in 2010–19, double the number filed for mechanical recycling (4,500 IPFs). While the patenting of standard chemical methods (such as cracking and pyrolysis) reached a peak in 2014, emerging technologies such as biological methods using living organisms (1,500 IPFs) or plastic-to-monomer recycling (2,300 IPFs) now offer new possibilities to degrade polymers and produce virgin-like plastics. Healthcare and cosmetics & detergent industries lead in bioplastic innovation In the area of bioplastic inventions, the study finds that the healthcare sector has by far the most patenting activity in total (more than 19,000 IPFs in 2010–19), despite accounting for less than 3 % of the total demand for plastics in Europe. However, the cosmetics and detergents sector has the largest share of its patenting activity in bioplastics, with the ratio of bioplastics IPFs to conventional plastics IPFs being 1:3, compared to 1:5 in the healthcare sector. Packaging, electronics and textiles are also significant contributors to innovation in bioplastics. CO 2 based plastics Finally, with regard to alternative plastics technologies, the report also looks at the role of plastics production from CO 2 , which has been launched by a small number of companies, mainly from Europe – such as Covestro in Germany – and South Korea and can play an important role on the road to the circular economy. MT [1] Patents for tomorrow’s plastics: Global innovation trends in recycling, circular design and alternative sources; Download from www.bioplasticsmagazine.de/202106/PATENTS.pdf www.epo.org Source: European Patent Office bioplastics MAGAZINE [01/22] Vol. 17 51
