Have you ever wondered what turns your jeans blue; dyes your carpet red and even insulates your fridge? The answer is aniline. Aniline is an organic chemical compound used to manufacture dyes, drugs and plastics. It plays an essential role in the chemical industry and is a starting materials for numerous products. Now, five million tons of aniline are produced annually worldwide and has been increasing by five percent every year. However, Covestro has found a bio-based solution to create aniline which can be derived from biomass. The supplier of high-tech materials has made an important breakthrough which uses plant-based raw materials after collaborating with partners on the development of a completely new process, initially in the laboratory. Until now, only fossil raw materials had been used for the production of aniline.<\/p>\n
“The newly developed process uses a microorganism as a catalyst to first convert the industrial sugar into an aniline precursor.”<\/p>\n
Following its success in the lab, Covestro plans to further develop the new process together with partners from industry and research. The first step is to upscale the process in a pilot plant with the ultimate goal of enabling the production of bio-based aniline on an industrial scale. That would be an unprecedented achievement in the chemical industry especially as the materials producer has a production capacity of about one million metric tons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe market is showing great interest in ecologically beneficial products based on renewable raw materials,\u201d said Covestro Chief Commercial Officer Dr. Markus Steilemann. \u201cBeing able to derive aniline from biomass is another key step towards making the chemical and plastics industries less dependent on fossil raw materials and market fluctuations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are you interested in sharing your work with the bio-based community? Get involved in our next conference in San Diego today!<\/p>\n
The industry currently derives aniline from benzene, a petroleum-based raw material. But industrial sugar, which is already derived on large scale from, for example, feed corn, straw and wood, can be used instead. The newly developed process uses a microorganism as a catalyst to first convert the industrial sugar into an aniline precursor. The aniline is then derived by means of chemical catalysis in a second step. \u201cThis means one hundred percent of the carbon in the aniline comes from renewable raw materials,\u201d explained J\u00e4ger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe process currently under development uses renewable raw materials and produces aniline with a much better CO2 footprint than that manufactured with standard technology,\u201d said Covestro project manager Dr. Gernot J\u00e4ger. \u201cThis also enables our customers to markedly improve the CO2 footprint of their aniline-based products.\u201d And the reactions would take place under milder conditions. The ecological aspects of the process are also being thoroughly evaluated by external institutes.<\/p>\n
Covestro is working with the University of Stuttgart, the CAT Catalytic Center at RWTH Aachen University, and Bayer AG to further develop the process. The long-term research project will receive funding for a period of two and a half years through the FNR (Fachagentur Nachwachsende Rohstoffe e.V.), a project agency of Germany\u2019s Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture<\/p>\n
The chemical company is already using renewable raw materials in a number of different products. A hardener for coatings that the company developed is one example: up to 70 percent of its carbon content is derived from plants. And CO2 is also increasingly being used an alternative raw material. Used in place of petroleum, CO2 accounts for up to 20 percent of the raw materials used in a precursor for flexible polyurethane foam that Covestro began producing in 2016. The company is also researching and developing many more products based on CO2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Have you ever wondered what turns your jeans blue; dyes your carpet red and even insulates your fridge? The answer is aniline. Aniline is an organic chemical compound used to manufacture dyes, drugs and plastics. It plays an essential role in the chemical industry and is a starting materials for numerous products. Now, five million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[6843,13253],"supplier":[93,6286,10858,19232,98,781],"class_list":["post-44550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-biochemicals","tag-processes","supplier-bayer-ag","supplier-bundesministerium-ernahrung-landwirtschaft","supplier-covestro-group","supplier-fachagentur-nachwachsende-rohstoffe-e-v-fnr","supplier-rheinisch-westfaelische-technische-hochschule-aachen-rwth","supplier-universitaet-stuttgart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44550"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=44550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}