December 17, 2003
Cargill Explore Using Chemical Compounds in Corn and Soybeans
Cargill is exploring the possibility of using the chemical compounds derived from crops for the creation of industrial products.
Agricultural groups and economic-development officials have long used the term "value-added agriculture" to refer to the creation of more products from crops. Now chemists are tapping into the unused value of grains.
Cargill, whose primary focus has been food ingredients, is exploring industrial products it can make with the chemical compounds derived from corn, soybeans and other crops. These compounds replace petroleum-based polymers.
Indeed, Cargill officials believe corn and soybeans can one day replace petroleum in a variety of manufactured products.
"I really think it can be a revolution in the chemical industry," said James Stoppert, senior director of industrial bio-products for Cargill.
Larry Johnson, director of the Center for Crop Utilization Research at Iowa State University in Ames, said bio-refining is within the grasp of small farm cooperatives as well.
"We are on the verge of a bio-economy. The question is: How fast will it develop?"
Researchers at Iowa State have developed their own products, including a soybean-based glue they may sell to companies that make building materials.
Cargill's Blair facility, which processes 68 million bushels of corn annually, is integral to the company's push into bio-refining. Built in 1995 to produce ethanol, livestock feed and corn syrup, the 650-acre facility employs nearly 500. The campus now includes private firms, which have invested $1 billion.
"This site today is much more than just a Cargill campus," said plant manager Eric Johnson. "It's Cargill and it's other businesses. This year, 2003, is really the first year we haven't added one or two companies and had construction going on."
Cargill's wet-milling process uses decades-old fermentation technology in new ways. The facility squeezes an average of 32 1/2 pounds of starch from a 56-pound bushel of corn. That starch forms the basis of the new polymers.
One early success has been industrial-grade lactic acid, produced by Cargill and a Netherlands company, Purac, the largest producer of lactic acid in the world.
The companies anticipate huge markets for lactic acid, for both food and industrial uses. Lactic acid is an ingredient in food additives, solvents and polymers used to make amino acids and precursors for pharmaceuticals. Potential uses exist for use in polyesters, acrylics and polyurethanes.
One consumer of the lactic acid is the $300 million Cargill Dow LLC plant built in 2001 as a joint venture with Dow Chemical.
Cargill Dow converts the lactic acid into polylactic acid, which is an ingredient in a variety of polymers, especially plastic grocery bags. Sanyo Electric has just introduced a biodegradable compact disc made from the Cargill Dow polylactic acid.
Cargill executives compare the current stage of bio-processing to the beginning of oil-based chemical developments in the 1930s.
"Ultimately, what we would like is to develop the next generation of bio-refining of oils," said Jim Millis, industrial bioproducts director at Cargill's Biotechnology Development Center in Minneapolis. "The transition has already begun. There's no doubt it's going to take place."
Supplies of petroleum and natural gas are susceptible to unstable worldwide geopolitical forces and eventual exhaustion. That's why renewable alternatives to oil and gas are needed.
Cargill researchers are targeting "platform chemicals" that can be used in more than one polymer or other product.
"These platform chemicals will lead to new materials, materials that provide some new advantage or value to consumers," Millis said.
Stoppert, a former CEO of Cargill Dow, spent more than 30 years researching plastics for Dow Chemical. Converting agricultural products into industrials is increasing because corn and soybean prices have remained relatively low while yields have steadily increased, he said.
"Over time," Stoppert said, "if you look 10 years out or more, we think we will have lower-cost products than the chemical industry.
"With a platform, there has to be $100 million product opportunities or we wouldn't be involved."
A barrel of oil costs about $30 while a bushel of corn is around $2, said Johnson, the Iowa State professor. But when oil prices drop or corn prices rise, bio-refining is less attractive.
"We have to accept that is the reality of it," Johnson said. "You can't be successful doing this with $5 corn."
The cost factor also has led to more government funding. Cargill recently received a $1.9 million matching grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for bio-refinery research.
"A lot of the government funding is going into ag residue, especially cornstalk, or stover," Stoppert said.
Processing stover may be another way for farmers to capture more value, Johnson said, although harvesting it has environmental consequences. Leaving corn residue in the field replaces soil carbon and decreases erosion.
Cargill officials say using renewable feedstock also alleviates waste and environmental issues posed from petroleum manufacturing. The Sanyo CD, for example, is expected to have a 50- to 100-year life span but degrade in a more environmentally friendly way than current plastic CDs.
Using soy oil, Cargill also is developing new foam rubber products that could come from most of Cargill's soybean facilities, including one in Sioux City, Iowa. The market for foam rubber is more than 4 billion pounds in the United States alone.
"This is a market where we could be selling in commercial quantities within a year," Millis said.
While other companies are involved in wet milling, Cargill officials believe there are few trying to extract so many industrial products from corn and soybeans.
"These kinds of development efforts aren't for the faint of heart," Stoppert said. "They are fairly long term and fairly high cost. But if we have made the commitment, the opportunity is going to be huge."
