Visit Stand 7A-236 to learn about BioAmber’s biobased succinic acid, which has emerged as one of the most competitive of the new biobased chemicals. As a platform chemical, biobased succinic acid provides researchers and product developers a valuable and sustainable chemical building block to enable innovative development of high-performance materials. Biobased succinic acid and its derivatives have demonstrated performance advantages in a wide variety of applications from personal care products, to non-phthalate plasticizers, to polymeric derivatives used in urethanes, polyesters and alkyd resin technologies. The biobased 4-carbon succinic acid is obtained from BioAmber’s acidic yeast fermentation process and produces a high-purity, polymer-grade diacid useful in the synthesis of polyester polyols for urethanes, polyesters, plasticizers, ester lubricants and bio-based 1,4-butane diol.

As a key building block for polyester polyols in urethanes, succinate polyester polyols (SA-PEPs) are easily produced in current manufacturing infrastructure. In polyurethanes, biobased SA-PEPs can improve tensile modulus and ultimate tensile strength of thermoplastic PU and caste PUs without lowering elongation, and improves the solvent resistance when compared to similar polyester adipates. In PU coatings, the SA-PEP enable coatings with excellent metal adhesion, flexibility, and improved solvent and abrasion resistance. These performance attributes broaden the formulation window for polyurethanes and have been adopted in polyurethanes in coatings for textiles, wood, adhesives, synthetic leather, and molded PU elastomers and thermoplastics. It is possible to formulate PU with as much as 70% new carbon content (based on the type of glycols).

 In polyester resins for can, coil, UPR gel coats and alkyds for coating formulations, the company has demonstrated that biobased SA can replace phthalic anhydride, iso-phthalic and adipic acid to generate resins with improved flexural strength, strain and good retention of heat deflection temperature. Moreover by replacing the aromatic acids with the aliphatic biobased SA, improvements in UV color stability (low yellowing) and improved surface gloss have been measured, thus demonstrating that bio-based SA can bring performance enhancement, sustainability and value to polyester resins for coatings.