Case Study: Stain resistant carpet has always come from oil fields. Now it comes from corn fields.
In
2000, DuPont introduced its newest polymer platform, DuPont™ Sorona® polymer.
Although DuPont discovered Sorona® in the 1940s, it never launched due to the
high cost of propanediol or PDO. A
research program concluded with the development of a process to make Bio-PDO®
using a fermentation process of corn sugar. In 2004, a joint venture known as
DuPont Tate & Lyle Bio Products, LLC was formed to produce this new
renewably sourced monomer. Incorporating Bio-PDO® into Sorona® made it a
renewably sourced polymer.