Dow Chemicals, in partnership with Mitsui, is all set to produce plastic from sugarcane. Dow is currently in the process of setting up a plant in this regard in Brazil. According to the company, polyethylene made from sugarcane would be as cheap as plastics made from petroleum products. Currently, the companies are in the process of setting up a 240 million-liter ethanol plant which would also be the largest polymer producing plant in the world. By the beginning of next year the Dow will complete the engineering plans for the plant.
Currently, polyethylene is mostly produced as a by-product of petroleum. About 80 million tonnes of polyethylene is made from petroleum annually. But rising cost of petroleum has meant that making polyethylene from petroleum is no more a cheaper option. That is why, the industry has been looking at alternative options to petroleum for a long time now. Brazil provides a perfect ground for such experimentation. For quite a long time now, the Brazilian Government has been encouraging use of ethanol in the country made from sugarcane. Now the polyethylene makers are looking to utilize that option to provide the market with a cheaper option.
The plant will transform ethanol into ethylene, the precursor to polyethylene. As has been said earlier, the plant will be biggest polymer plant in the world and thus, it will have a capacity equal to a conventional polyethylene plant that uses petroleum as raw material. The capacity of the plant will be even bigger that the Braskem plant that currently produces 200,000 tones of polyethylene every year. It has been estimated that the new Dow plant will have a capacity of producing 350,000 metric tones of polyethylene every year.
This not the first time Dow has invested in bio-plastics. Earlier in another project, they teamed up with Cargill to make plastics from corn. But that project failed miserably since the bio-plastic did not really make any headway into the polyethylene market. They also found the product difficult to market and distribute. With the sugarcane based polyethylene, Dow is looking to undo their previous mistakes and provide the polyethylene market with a cheaper and an eco-friendly option.
Via: Technology Review
