Chemical Process Development Using JMP®: Elucidating Reaction Mechanisms Using Statistics
Scott Allen, Vice President of Catalyst Development; Jeff Conuel, Senior Research Engineer; William Keefe, Research Technician; Chris Simoneau, Senior Scientist, Novomer
Novomer, Inc. is commercializing a class of aliphatic polycarbonate polyols that use carbon dioxide as a raw material in their synthesis. The key to the technology is the catalyst, which incorporates CO2 directly into the polymer backbone, providing materials with up to 50 wt% CO2 in the product. This CO2 is permanently fixed into the molecule, providing one of the only ways that waste CO2 can be incorporated into new chemicals while utilizing 100% of its mass. Novomer developed a new catalyst that showed much improved activity and selectivity when compared to the original catalyst. We wanted to advance the process development as fast as possible, but this catalyst was significantly different than our first generation catalyst. We worked with JMP to incorporate a new type of screening design – the Definitive Screening Design.