In the United Kingdom, bioplastic company Chrysalix Technologies has been named to Scientific American magazine’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2019.
Founded in 2017, the company uses a low-cost ionic liquid to separate plant components lignin and cellulose to make it easier to use biomaterials such as wood and waste to produce plastic. Existing processes to separate these plant components are expensive.
“Access to low-cost, high-quality lignin and cellulose is a key bottleneck for the sustainable biobased chemical industry, but our technology has the potential to fundamentally change this,” Dr. Agi Brandt-Talbot tells British Plastics.