Ascend Performance Materials is seeing growth in its Bioserve-brand line of materials with plant-based content.
Bioserve grades of Ascend's nylon 6/6 resins are now available, along with related fibers and feedstocks. Bioserve grades use plant-based raw materials, such as soybean oil or forestry waste, Sustainability Director Chris Johnson said on a recent webinar hosted by Houston-based Ascend.
On the company's website, Ascend officials said that mass-balance accounting allows Bioserve products to be drop-in replacements without re-qualifying the materials. Mass-balance accounting also allows Ascend "to use existing processes to scale up production of sustainable materials more quickly," they added.
"Similar to buying renewable electricity from the grid, mass balance allows us to allocate bio-based raw materials to specific products," officials said, adding that the process is certified according to ISCC Plus standards.
Other sustainable products from Ascend include ReDefyne recycled content nylon 6/6 resins, which can have up to 100 percent pre-consumer and post-consumer recycled content. Ascend introduced its ReDefyne lineup at the K 2022 trade show. Johnson said Ascend uses the term pre-consumer to mean post-industrial. He added that ReDefyne can be used in demanding engineering applications and engineering compounds.
In November, Ascend purchased a majority stake in California-based carpet recycler Circular Polymers LLC and renamed the business Circular Polymers by Ascend. Lincoln, Calif.-based Circular recycles post-consumer, high-performance polymers including nylons 6 and 6/6, polypropylene and PET.
When the deal was announced, officials said that Circular can provide a consistent supply of high-quality post-consumer materials for its ReDefyne line. Ascend has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2030.
Circular reclaims and reprocesses post-consumer carpet via a unique technology and has redirected about 85 million pounds of waste from landfills into new goods since 2018. The business employs about 60 at a plant in Lincoln.
Johnson said that Circular can reclaim 95 percent of original material by recycling post-consumer carpet into resins. "Our goal is to reduce the carbon footprint with drop-in solutions," he said.
Ascend ranks as a global leader in nylon 6/6 resins and compounds. The firm has annual sales of more than $3 billion and is a unit of New York-based investment firm SK Capital Partners.