Worn Again Technologies announces plans to build a new textile recycling demo plant in Winterthur Switzerland

Worn Again Technologies’ demonstration plant will be constructed near one of the startup’s technology partners, Sulzer Chemtech, in Winterthur, Switzerland. This represents a crucial step towards upscaling and commercializing the company’s recycling process technology.

In particular, the new industrial-scale infrastructure will help validate the closed-loop chemical recycling solution that has been developed by Worn Again Technologies and its strategic partners. The process obtains polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and cellulose from non-reusable, hard-to-recycle textiles that constitute post-industrial and post-consumer waste. Additionally, the Worn Again Technologies process purifies the products by removing dyes, contaminants and impurities, a step forward from traditional recycling methods. As such, it delivers high-quality, virgin-like materials that can be reintroduced into supply chains to become new fibers, textiles and other products.

Erik Koep, CEO at Worn Again Technologies, comments: “We are excited to be taking the next step in making reliable, high-performance textile recycling a reality. The construction and operation of this demonstration plant are the next major milestones in achieving our vision for textile circularity. We look forward to starting operations soon and see this as the first plant in a global network of processing facilities.”

Torsten Wintergerste, Chairman of Worn Again Technologies, adds: “We are delighted to see our technologies being leveraged to create a state-of-the-art textile recycling plant. Building it in Switzerland gives Worn Again Technologies direct access to Sulzer Chemtech’s global R&D facilities and the Swiss textile industry. We will build an ecosystem of partners around this demo plant and drive forward the creation of a circular economy of textiles. Switzerland is an ideal location for Worn Again to realize the demonstration plant with all stakeholders in the shortest time period possible.”

https://wornagain.co.uk/

Sumitomo Chemical and Newlight Technologies Announce Joint Development Project to Create Automotive and Textile Materials Using a Carbon-Negative*1 Microbe-Produced Biomaterial Called AirCarbon

Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. and U.S.-based Newlight Technologies, Inc. have started the joint development of polypropylene (PP) compounds*2 for use in automobiles and textile applications using a carbon-negative biomaterial produced by microorganisms from methane called AirCarbonTM.

Methane is said to have a greenhouse effect approximately 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide, and its reduction is crucial to effectively curb global warming. The 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in 2021 launched an international framework aimed at reducing methane emissions.

The Sumitomo Chemical Group, as a globally-operating chemical manufacturer, is advancing initiatives to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 on the two fronts of its self-imposed obligation to bring the Group’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions close to zero and its contributions to global GHG emissions reduction through the Group’s products and technologies. In particular, in the area of automotive materials, where high quality and lower environmental impact are required, Sumitomo Chemical manufactures and supplies high-performance PP compounds and products made from recycled materials for the world’s leading car manufacturers.

Newlight Technologies is a company headquartered in California, the U.S., that has successfully developed the world’s first commercialized biomaterial made from methane as a carbon source (product name: AirCarbonTM) through its proprietary research utilizing methanotrophs*3, microorganisms that exist in nature that metabolize methane. Third-party organizations*4 have certified that the carbon footprint of AirCarbonTM is significantly negative when produced using renewable sources of energy for electric power. Newlight Technologies started the operation of the world’s first commercial-scale manufacturing plant for AirCarbonTM in 2020, and has been supplying the biomaterial to a wide variety of customers.

In this joint development project, Newlight Technologies will develop new grades of AirCarbonTM suitable for use in automotive and in textile applications, sourcing methane emissions captured and recovered from coal mining, agricultural, and industrial operations as the starting point for its production process. Sumitomo Chemical, leveraging its resin design and processing technologies cultivated over many years, will develop new compounds made from resins developed by Newlight Technologies and PP, with the aim of creating materials for automotive bumpers and interiors with equivalent quality and lower environmental impact as compared with conventional PP compounds, as well as materials for textiles that can be dyed, which has been difficult with conventional PP compounds but which can be improved through the use of AirCarbonTM. Sumitomo Chemical and Newlight Technologies will work together to contribute to creating a carbon-neutral society by providing various industries with products created through the combination of each other’s technologies.

Sumitomo Chemical will continue to actively promote open innovation with a range of stakeholders and accelerate the development of new products and technologies that help resolve societal problems.

Noriaki Takeshita, Representative Director and Senior Managing Executive Officer, Sumitomo Chemical:
“Our PP compounding business is actively promoting the use of recycled PP to contribute to building a circular economy. By leveraging AirCarbonTM from Newlight Technologies, we will provide carbon-negative PP compounds to our customers.”

Mark Herrema, Chief Executive Officer, Newlight Technologies:
“The mission of AirCarbonTM is using nature-based solutions to create decarbonization at scale, and our work with Sumitomo helps us move closer to that goal. We are excited to team up with Sumitomo and look forward to seeing applications on the market that help automotive partners meet their carbon reduction goals.”

https://www.sumitomo-chem.co.jp/

Mutares acquires MANN+HUMMEL Group’s high-performance plastic parts business

Mutares SE & Co. KGaA has signed an agreement to acquire the high-performance plastic parts business of MANN+HUMMEL. The segment includes products beyond filtration and separation solutions, including air intake manifolds, high-pressure air lines and fluid reservoirs. In addition, as part of the transaction, Mutares and MANN+HUMMEL have agreed on a manufacturing cooperation, which will contribute to the total revenues of EUR 500 million. Headquartered in Ludwigsburg, Germany, the MANN+HUMMEL Group develops intelligent filtration and separation solutions under its two business segments Transportation and Life Sciences & Environment that enable cleaner mobility, cleaner air and cleaner water.

This acquisition of the MANN+HUMMEL business will strengthen the Automotive & Mobility segment. The closing of the transaction will result in the acquisition of MANN+HUMMEL’s entire business beyond filtration and separation solutions, which essentially consists of production facilities in Bad Harzburg, Sonneberg (Germany) and Laval (France) with a total of approximately 1,500 employees. MANN+HUMMEL’s business is very well positioned in the market and supplies well-known original equipment manufacturers in the automotive industry worldwide. In addition, it will benefit from synergy effects with LMS and SFC Solutions Group, which together can offer their customers a broad product portfolio of injection molded components and elastomer parts worldwide.

“I am very pleased to announce the acquisition of MANN+HUMMEL’s high-performance plastic parts business. With our expertise in the automotive industry and the trend towards e-mobility, we see new opportunities and thus enormous growth potential for the company. Especially the synergy potential with LMS and the SFC Solutions Group will make the company an indispensable partner in the automotive supply sector of plastics and elastomers,” comments Johannes Laumann, CIO of Mutares SE & Co. KGaA.

Direct sound printing is a potential game-changer in 3D printing

Most 3D printing methods currently in use rely either on photo (light)- or thermo (heat)-activated reactions to achieve precise manipulation of polymers. The development of a new platform technology called direct sound printing (DSP), which uses soundwaves to produce new objects, may offer a third option.

It shows how focused ultrasound waves can be used to create sonochemical reactions in minuscule cavitation regions — essentially tiny bubbles. Extremes of temperature and pressure lasting trillionths of a second can generate pre-designed complex geometries that cannot be made with existing techniques.

“Ultrasonic frequencies are already being used in destructive procedures like laser ablation of tissues and tumours. We wanted to use them to create something,” says Muthukumaran Packirisamy, a professor and Concordia Research Chair in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering at the Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science. He is the paper’s corresponding author.

Mohsen Habibi, a research associate at Concordia’s Optical-Bio Microsystems Lab, is the paper’s lead author. His lab colleague and PhD student Shervin Foroughi and former master’s student Vahid Karamzadeh are co-authors.

As the researchers explain, DSP relies on chemical reactions created by fluctuating pressure inside tiny bubbles suspended in a liquid polymer solution.

“We found that if we use a certain type of ultrasound with a certain frequency and power, we can create very local, very focused chemically reactive regions,” Habibi says. “Basically, the bubbles can be used as reactors to drive chemical reactions to transform liquid resin into solids or semi-solids.”

The reactions caused by ultrasound-wave-directed oscillation inside the micro-sized bubbles are intense, though they only last picoseconds. The temperature inside the cavity shoots up to around 15,000 Kelvin and pressure exceeds 1,000 bar (the Earth’s surface pressure at sea level is around one bar). The reaction time is so brief the surrounding material is not affected.

The researchers experimented on a polymer used in additive manufacturing called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). They used a transducer to generate an ultrasonic field that passes through the build material’s shell and solidifies the targeted liquid resin and deposits it onto a platform or another previously solidified object. The transducer moves along a predetermined path, eventually creating the desired product pixel by pixel. The microstructure’s parameters can be manipulated by adjusting the duration of the ultrasound wave’s frequency and the viscosity of the material being used.

The authors believe that DSP’s versatility will benefit industries that rely on highly specific and delicate equipment. The polymer PDMS, for instance, is widely used in the microfluidics industry, where manufacturers require controlled environments (cleanrooms) and sophisticated lithographic technique to create medical devices and biosensors.

Aerospace engineering and repair can also benefit from DSP, as ultrasound waves penetrate opaque surfaces like metallic shells. This can allow maintenance crews to service parts located deep within an aircraft’s fuselage that would be inaccessible to printing techniques reliant on photoactivated reactions. DSP could even have medical applications for remote in-body printing for humans and other animals.

“We proved that we can print multiple materials, including polymers and ceramics,” Packirisamy says. “We are going to try polymer-metal composites next, and eventually we want to get to printing metal using this method.”

https://www.concordia.ca/

Neste teams up with Circularise to increase visibility along circular polymers and chemicals value chains

Neste and Netherlands-based startup Circularise have announced a partnership to bring Circularise’s traceability software into circular polymers and chemicals supply chains. The companies are collaborating in establishing digital solutions to trace renewable and recycled material flows, providing increased transparency along the value chain.

The companies will use Circularise’s blockchain-based supply chain traceability software, which creates a digital twin for the physical material. The twin stores information on the used materials throughout the value chain, enabling all value chain parties to keep track of the material. This allows them to verify where materials come from and how and where they were processed. The digital twin can also provide information on sustainability data such as the carbon footprint of the materials or products made from them.

Data-based supply chain visibility can strengthen trust in sustainable solutions

Solutions to increase visibility into supply chains become particularly valuable in the polymers and chemicals industry as materials undergo several processing steps and often get blended and co-processed with other materials. Especially in the ramp-up phase of more sustainable and circular value chains, renewable or recycled materials may be processed together with fossil materials – making it difficult to verifiably link end products with a much lower carbon footprint and the renewable or recycled materials they were produced with. As long as there is a mix of raw materials, a large share of renewable or recycled products will rely on a mass balancing allocation method as a way to link the end products to their raw materials.

With a digital supply chain tracking system, Neste and Circularise intend to enable value chain players to still make verifiable claims about such products. At the same time, it will allow parties along the value chain to better understand their supply chains, leading to improved transparency when it comes to life cycle emissions of products or other sustainability factors such as biodiversity and human rights.

“It’s usually very easy to claim sustainability, but very often, it’s not easy at all to back these claims,” says Isabella Tonaco, Vice President Strategy Execution & Marketing at Neste Renewable Polymers and Chemicals. “Yet, trust and credibility are crucial factors when it comes to sustainability. Being able to track and trace all the materials going into a product provides a solid basis for gaining that trust and credibility. We are looking forward to working with Circularise to provide the polymers and chemicals industry with a traceability solution to bring the necessary transparency into the value chains.”

While the purpose of the collaboration is increasing visibility and trust, Circularise also puts priority on confidentiality. Using a public blockchain-based infrastructure and Circularise’s proprietary Smart Questioning technology allows combining these two targets into one solution, enabling the sharing of trustworthy data and information between parties along the value chain without compromising on intellectual property or privacy.

“We want to really break the communication barriers that limit supply chain traceability,” said Mesbah Sabur, the founder of Circularise. “And we’ve been working with suppliers that truly want to create circular operations, that want to cooperate with their clients and regulators, that want to share insights into their products, but at the same time don’t want to risk their sensitive data. Neste is one of the frontrunners in this space and we are excited to work with them to make supply chains more transparent and the world more circular.”

https://www.neste.com/

ALPEK CONCLUDES ACQUISITION OF OCTAL

Alpek, S.A.B. de C.V. announced that it has received all necessary approvals from the regulatory authorities and has finalized its acquisition of OCTAL Holding SAOC (“OCTAL”).

Pursuant to the purchase agreement, Alpek acquired 100% of the shares of OCTAL for U.S. $620 million on a debt-free basis. Financing was secured through a mix of free cash flow generated from existing businesses and dedicated bank loans.

Alpek will assume control of OCTAL’s operations starting on June 1, 2022. The Company expects an accretive EBITDA effect of approximately U.S. $120 million from these assets throughout the remainder of 2022, largely based on the better-than-expected Polyester market conditions prevalent in recent months. This would increase the Company’s Comparable EBITDA Guidance to U.S. $1,370 million and Reported EBITDA Guidance to U.S. $1,485 million.

“We are pleased to have concluded this acquisition ahead of the expected timeline,” stated José de Jesús Valdez, Alpek’s CEO. “We are excited to welcome OCTAL’s management team and employees into our family, leveraging their long-standing relationships with customers, their diverse backgrounds, and technical proficiency to drive the Company’s long-term growth.”