FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | June 07, 2019

Green chemistry technologies honored by EPA

WASHINGTON, June 7, 2019 — Industrial and scientific innovations that decrease the use of hazardous chemicals, reduce manufacturing costs and result in a more sustainable product are being honored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., on June 10.

“The Green Chemistry Challenge Award winners demonstrate how chemistry innovations can enable both economic opportunities and environmental stewardship,” says Thomas Connelly Jr., Ph.D., executive director and CEO of the American Chemical Society (ACS). “We applaud the chemists and chemical engineers being honored this year for their technologies that reduce waste and the use of energy and rare materials.”

The winning technologies are:

Academic Award: Alkaline Zn-MnO2 Batteries for Grid Storage Applications. Sanjoy Banerjee, Ph.D., City University of New York Energy Institute, in partnership with Sandia National Laboratories, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Urban Electric Power Inc., is being recognized for creating rechargeable zinc-manganese dioxide batteries that can be recharged thousands of times without significant degradation of capacity. These batteries do not have some of the limitations of lithium-ion or lead-acid batteries, and they use materials that are abundant and already in use.

Small Business: Microbially Produced High-Purity Glucaric Acid for Diverse Uses. Kalion Inc., Milton, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is being recognized for commercializing the first microbial fermentation process to produce glucaric acid. Glucaric acid produced by Kalion’s method offers the possibility of replacing environmentally polluting chemicals with a biodegradable, non-toxic, sugar-derived product.

Greener Synthetic Pathways: Innovating for a Greener Future: Development of a Green & Sustainable Manufacturing Process for Ceftolozane Sulfate. Merck Research Laboratories, Rahway, New Jersey, is being recognized for redesigning the manufacturing route to the antibiotic component of ZerbaxaTM. Key to the redesign is a sustainable crystallization-based purification process that enabled the development of the revolutionary new process that reduces process mass intensity by 75%, reduces raw material costs by 50% and increases the overall yield by more than 50%. Additionally, carbon footprint and energy usage are expected to be reduced by 50% and 38%, respectively, and water savings are estimated to be 3.7 million gallons annually.

Greener Reaction Conditions: TruPath®. Washing Systems LLC, Loveland, Ohio, is being recognized for developing TruPath® technology, a successful alternative to traditional commercial laundering technologies that use harsh and harmful chemicals. TruPath® utilizes more readily biodegradable surfactants in and eliminates phosphates from wash formulas.

The Green Chemistry Challenge Awards are a collaboration between the EPA and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute®. A panel of technical experts convened by the Institute makes recommendations to EPA for the winners. The 2019 awards event will be held in conjunction with the 23rd Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference/9th International Conference on Green & Sustainable Chemistry in Reston, Virginia, on June 11-13.

If you are interested in attending the awards ceremony, please email gci@acs.org.

The ACS Green Chemistry Institute® is an institute of the American Chemical Society dedicated to catalyzing the implementation of green and sustainable chemistry and engineering throughout the global chemistry enterprise and the Society. ACS GCI convenes industrial roundtables, holds an annual Green Chemistry & Engineering conference (gcande.org), and offers educational resources including grants, awards, webinars and workshops — encouraging scientific innovations to solve environmental and human health issues facing our world today.

The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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