Science and agricultural leaders DuPont Industrial Biosciences (DuPont) and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) announced a new breakthrough process with the potential to expand the materials landscape in the 21st century with exciting and truly novel, high-performance renewable materials. The technology has applications in packaging, textiles, engineering plastics and many other industries.
The companies have developed a method for producing furan dicarboxylic methyl ester (FDME) from fructose. FDME is a high-purity derivative of furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), one of the 12 building blocks identified by the U.S. Department of Energy that can be converted into a number of high-value, bio-based chemicals or materials that can deliver high performance in a number of applications. It has long been sought-after and researched, but has not yet been available at commercial scale and at reasonable cost. The new FDME technology is a more efficient and simple process than traditional conversion approaches and results in higher yields, lower energy usage and lower capital expenditures.