Bayer MaterialScience is a major polymers company operating on a worldwide basis.  Sustainability, helping the environment, and conserving resources are important themes at Bayer MaterialScience (BMS).  Products and services brought to market by Bayer support the development and growth of renewable energy, energy-efficient buildings, and lightweighting for fuel savings in transportation / mobility sectors for society around the world.  Some thermoplastics can be made from biobased chemicals derived from naturally occurring plant material.  This talk will discuss part of BMS's recent effort to use more biobased materials, and illustrate the progress being made by discussing a new grade of thermoplastic polyurethane which possesses a higher biobased content and superior performance properties.  The talk will also mention a catalysis breakthrough which could be used to incorporate carbon dioxide into the polyether polyols used to make polyurethanes.  Typically in industry carbon dioxide is a waste, but in the future it may be recovered from flue gas, purified and employed as a co-reactant.   A challenge for humankind is to find ways to move away from one-time uses of our raw materials and more towards a closed loop type of concept.  The challenges and rewards of such ideas will be explored in the talk.

Development of sustainable polymers at Bayer MaterialScience

247th National Meeting (2014)

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