Bioeth­an­ol made from agri­cul­tur­al residues used for the first time in clean­ing agents

Clari­ant, a world lead­er in spe­cialty chem­ic­als (and IBB net­work mem­ber), in cooper­a­tion with Wern­er & Mertz, the pro­du­cer of Frosch® products, has launched a pro­ject which expands the pos­sible applic­a­tions of bioeth­an­ol made from agri­cul­tur­al residues such as straw to deter­gents, cleansers and clean­ing agents. sun­li­quid® bioeth­an­ol has been used in Frosch® Bio-Spir­it Multis­ur­face-Clean­er since the begin­ning of the year. As part of this, Clari­ant sup­plied the cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol, also called bio spir­it, at the end of 2015 from its pre-com­mer­cial plant in Straub­ing, where up to 1,000 tons of cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol are pro­duced annu­ally using the sun­li­quid® pro­cess. »Bio-based chem­ic­als from loc­al straw, such as cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol, are truly sus­tain­able and advanced act­ive ingredi­ents. The col­lab­or­a­tion with Wern­er & Mertz demon­strates once again that products based on agri­cul­tur­al residues, which are pro­duced without the use of fossil fuels and are not in com­pet­i­tion with food sup­ply, are also rel­ev­ant in the con­sumer goods sec­tor,« says Pro­fess­or Andre Kolter­mann, Head of Group Bio­tech­no­logy at Clari­ant. »We are very happy with the fact that we can real­ize this pion­eer­ing pro­ject with a renowned part­ner such as Wern­er & Mertz, and this demon­strates the diversity of the areas of applic­a­tion of our sun­li­quid® tech­no­logy, which can also be imple­men­ted in oth­er indus­tries.« Wern­er & Mertz, the fam­ily-run com­pany based in Mainz, also wel­comes the col­lab­or­a­tion. With the ​“recyc­late ini­ti­at­ive” for pack­aging and the Frosch® ini­ti­at­ive for ​“loc­ally-grown act­ive ingredi­ents,” the com­pany has already been enga­ging in pion­eer­ing work in the field of sus­tain­ab­il­ity for some time and wishes to fur­ther expand this through the use of anoth­er plant-based raw mater­i­al, the sun­li­quid® cel­lu­losic alco­hol. »At Wern­er & Mertz, we have a tra­di­tion of doing busi­ness based on the prin­ciple of sus­tain­ab­il­ity. We always try to meet the needs of our cus­tom­ers with new and sus­tain­able solu­tions. The col­lab­or­a­tion with Clari­ant reaf­firms our com­mit­ment to pro­tect the envir­on­ment and resources,« adds Rein­hard Schneider, Man­aging Part­ner at Wern­er & Mertz. Alco­hol has been known for its grease and dirt-dis­solv­ing prop­er­ties for dec­ades. Through the use of cel­lu­losic alco­hol in Frosch® Bio-Spir­it Multis­ur­face-Clean­er, these prop­er­ties are coupled with sus­tain­able and envir­on­ment­ally friendly man­u­fac­tur­ing: due to its vir­tu­ally car­bon-neut­ral pro­duc­tion, cel­lu­losic eth­an­ol saves up to 95 % of CO₂ emis­sions com­pared to syn­thet­ic eth­an­ol from fossil resources. At the same time, it is pro­duced from loc­al residues and does not com­pete with food pro­duc­tion or arable land. Frosch® Bio-Spir­it Multis­ur­face-Clean­er Orange has been pro­duced with the sun­li­quid® bio-alco­hol since the begin­ning of this year and is avail­able at Ger­man retail­ers as of Feb­ru­ary 2016. Source: Clari­ant Produkte (Deutsch­land) GmbH