Features
How AI is creating novel biomaterials
DAN*NA, a Barcelona-based green bio-engineering company, has been attracting international recognition for its high-tech biomaterials. Its flagship product is a bio-PLA that is more flexible than market competitors while retaining transparency. It has also patented a new bio-based materials for…
Bio-based superabsorbents on the sanitary products market
Superabsorbent polymers (SAPS) are the working components inside diapers and sanitary towels. These heavy-duty chemicals absorb and retain bodily fluids like blood and urine up to hundreds of times their original weight. SAPs revolutionised personal care when they hit the…
The chemicals companies decarbonising with bio-feedstocks
Accenture and NexantECA, an energy and chemicals advisory company, estimate that the chemicals industry needs to cut annual GHG emissions by 186 million tons in total over the next thirty years to reach net zero by 2050. While most chemical…
An oil shock may be imminent. Has the bioeconomy’s time come?
The first plant-based plastics entered the market in the eighties. Four decades on and only one percent of the world’s annual plastic output is made from biological sources. Despite mounting pressure on corporations to decarbonise, high market prices are still…
The detergents industry rediscovers the cleansing power of plants
Detergents are a section of the chemical industry where bio-substitutes for petrochemicals are being adopted at a rapid rate. Europe is the largest market for renewable detergents and 50 percent of the estimated 3 million tons of surfactants made there…
Startup’s no-kill cellular fur could be a fashion gamechanger
Fur has proven to be among the most difficult textiles to imitate synthetically. Now, Dutch company Geneus Biotech has grown the real thing. Under the brand name FUROIDTM, it has produced a 2cm by 2 cm swatch prototype of the…