Avantium N.V., a leading technology provider in renewable chemistry, will partner with Thailand's SCG Chemicals (SCGC) to further develop CO2-based polymers and to scale-up to a pilot plant with an indicative capacity of 10 tonnes per year.
One of Avantium’s innovative technology platforms, called Volta Technology, uses electrochemistry to convert CO2 to high-value products and chemical building blocks including glycolic acid. By combining glycolic acid with lactic acid, Avantium can produce polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA), a carbon-negative polymer with valuable characteristics: it has an excellent barrier against oxygen and moisture, has good mechanical properties, is recyclable and is both home compostable and marine degradable. This makes PLGA a more sustainable and cost- effective alternative to, for example, non-degradable, fossil-based polymers. Since early 2023, Avantium and SCGC have been working together to further evaluate PLGA. To this end, Avantium has produced samples of different PLGAs, which have been evaluated at SCGC’s Norner AS facility. The two parties have now agreed to take the next step in their cooperation and establish a Joint Development Agreement. Under this agreement, Avantium and SCGC intend to further evaluate PLGA in order to subsequently scale up production of glycolic acid monomer and PLGA polyester in the next two years to a pilot plant.
Image courtesy of Avantium.