The Carbon-Sequestering Diaper
By Michael Kanellos
Diapers hold a lot of things, including atmospheric carbon monoxide.
Novomer - which said yesterday it has raised $14 million in a second round - can convert carbon monoxide into acrylic acid, one of the principal ingredients in the absorbent material in diapers, according to CEO Jim Mahoney.
More importantly, the company's polymers and chemicals are becoming cost-competitive with traditional fossil-fuel-based chemicals. In some cases, Novomer's materials cost less and can provide performance advantages. A container made in part with Novomer's materials might exhibit more rigidity, thus allowing the manufacturer to reduce the total raw materials consumed in packaging. Thus, even if the process adds some cost, it reduces the overall bill of materials.
"I don't think we will ever get as cheap as polyethylene," he said, the cheap, genetic plastic used in a lot of products. Many manufacturers, however, have specific formulas for their polymers, so the market for Novomer's materials remains large, he added. Carbon taxes and regulations, where the exist, further bolster the company's economic arguments.
The company's secret sauce is a series of chemical catalysts discovered by Cornell professor Geoffrey Coates that can prompt a reaction between epoxides (a fossil fuel material) and carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide at low temperatures and pressures.
By using Novomer's chemistry, the fossil fuel content in a polymer can be cut from 100 percent to 50 percent. Ultimately, the fossil figure might drop to zero. Researchers tried to devise similar catalysts for decades "but we are 30,000 times more efficient than they were in the '70s," he said.
The challenges now lay in convincing manufacturers that carbon monoxide and dioxide plastics will perform as well as traditional ones and finding partners to scale the business. Later in the year, Novomer hopes to announce four-way deals between themselves, carbon capture service providers, chemical manufacturers and consumer products companies about bringing more of this material into mainstream industrial processes.
In the meantime, the run-up in oil prices serves as an advertisement.
"A lot of companies want to get control over their raw materials," Mahoney said. "In 2007 and 2008 they couldn't control it."
