July 28, 2010 - A US company developing a novel way to convert carbon dioxide into plastics is one of six firms receiving a total of $106 million (£68 million) in government funding as the US pushes research converting captured waste carbon dioxide into useful products.
Massachusetts-based Novomer has received $18.4 million from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a process for converting carbon dioxide into polycarbonate polymers that could be used to make plastic bottles.
Since its formation 4 years ago, Novomer has been developing a way of reacting traditional epoxide feedstocks with carbon dioxide from industrial waste streams to form plastics that contain between 40 and 50 per cent carbon dioxide by weight. The company uses a catalyst technology developed by Geoff Coates at Cornell University in New York, US, and employs a cobalt catalyst which chief executive Jim Mahoney says is fairly straightforward to synthesise despite being a relatively complex organometallic compound.
