1 September 2016
About FDCA and PEF
Avantium has developed the proprietary
which enables a catalytic conversion
of biobased carbohydrates (sugars) to
FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid).
FDCA has numerous potential applications
as a biobased building block
for new chemicals and plastics, such as
PEF (polyethylene furandicarboxylate).
PEF can be produced from FDCA using
conventional industrial production plants.
PEF is a 100% biobased polyester
with strong performance benefits over PET, such as
a higher barrier to oxygen and CO2,
higher mechanical strength, and
a reduction in carbon footprint of more than 50%.
These properties of PEF enable improvements
to existing bottles and packaging films,
for example shelf life extension and lightweighting.
DETAILS
have jointly developed
thin films made from PEF,
a 100% biobased plastic based on
Avantium’s proprietary YXY technology
for the production of FDCA.
These PEF films are about 10 micrometer in thickness
(one hundredth of a millimeter) and
can be applied for food packaging,
in electronics applications such as
displays or solar panels, industrial and medical packages.
Compared to standard PET films,
PEF films have
* a 10x higher oxygen barrier,
* 2~3x higher water vapor barrier,
* improved mechanical strength
* and are fully transparent.
The performance benefits enable
new packaging opportunities, such as
transparent pouches for soups, sauces or baby foods.
The barrier properties extend the shelf life
when packaging oxygen sensitive products
like meat, fish, dairy products, or fresh pizzas,
or moisture sensitive products such as
cereals, cookies, crisps, personal care
or medical products, and
enhance the aroma barrier
for packaged cheeses, fish or detergents.
The market development of the PEF films in Asia
will be performed in collaboration with
Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (‘Mitsui’),
with which Avantium announced a partnership
in December 2015.
The parties expect to offer samples
for packaging tests from 2017 onwards.
Moreover, Toyobo and Avantium are jointly optimizing
polymerization processes
in Toyobo’s existing polymerization assets
to produce PEF resin at commercial scale from
MEG (ethylene glycol) and
Avantium’s biobased chemical building block FDCA,.
The parties intend to scale up PEF resin production
to Toyobo’s commercial polymerization lines
in Iwakuni, Japan.
Contact details Avantium
Dominique Levant
(Marketing & Communications Officer),
Telephone: +31 (0)20 5860132,
E-mail: dominique.levant@avantium.com.
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