Låkril Technologies, a Chicago-based start-up company officially launching Monday, announced it has licensed catalyst technology from the University of Minnesota to convert corn-derived lactic acid to bio-based acrylics that provide at least 35% CO2 reduction from today's petroleum-derived acrylics. Låkril Technologies aims to commercialize sustainable acrylics at prices that compete with petroleum using traditional chemical refining approaches.
"Bio-based acrylics have long been sought by producers and end users, but routes leading to cost parity at scale with today's petrochemicals have not been found before this discovery," said Låkril President Chris Nicholas. "Our thermochemical technology provides outstanding yields of bio-based based acrylics from lactic acid allowing us to achieve competitive economics with petroleum-based products."
The bio-acrylics breakthrough was invented at the University of Minnesota with funding from the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers (CSP), a National Science Foundation Center for Chemical Innovation focused on sustainable polymer research.
"Our goal from the beginning has been to give sustainable materials a competitive edge by making them at incredibly low cost, such that the transition to bio-derived products is effortless for consumers and end users," says Paul Dauenhauer, Professor and MacArthur Fellow at the University of Minnesota. "With conventional materials made from corn, we remove economic and technical barriers to the sustainable materials economy."
"The bi-functional catalyst discovered in the Dauenhauer laboratory for the lactate-to-acrylate transformation is an outstanding example of applying fundamental mechanistic understanding to an important societal problem. Efficient transformations of renewable resources to commonly used polymers will continue to play a critical role for a sustainable future in this space," noted CSP Director and Professor at the University of Minnesota Marc Hillmyer.
Launching formally Monday, Låkril Technologies has already secured $200,000 in research funding from the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council and the Indiana Corn Marketing Council. These research funds come from the farm families of Minnesota and Indiana and their corn check-off investment and enable the company to establish a laboratory and advance the initial discovery toward commercialization.
"Minnesota Corn is proud to partner with Låkril on their efforts to expand market opportunities for corn-derived sugars and ethanol and contribute to the increased sustainability of many paints, coatings, adhesives and other polymers," said Brandon Fast, chairman of the Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council (MCR&PC).
Låkril Technologies was also chosen as a winner of the National Corn Growers Association's Consider Corn Challenge III. The National Corn Challenge is sponsored yearly by the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) to advance technologies to improve a product or process, scale up, or produce biobased materials from field corn. Previous winners of the Consider Corn Challenge contests have scaled up to the next phase of development, received additional grant funding, entered into joint agreements, and obtained registration for state biobased production incentives.
Nicholas was invited to Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference (ABLC) in San Francisco at the end of October to accept the Consider Corn Challenge III award and provide his vision of corn-based lactic acid providing a 35% CO2 reduction from today's acrylics while expanding markets for up to 700 million bushels of corn.
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