US: In the third quarter of 2019, Dow experienced a price decline of 12% on its volumes which fell 2%, yielding net sales of US$9.4bn, down by 15% compared to US$10.8bn in the three months to 30 September 2018. Its operating earnings before interest and taxes declined by 18% year-on-year to US$1.1bn from US$1.3bn.

UK: Edinburgh-based bio-insulation company IndiNature is preparing to build a Euro4.4m production plant at Hawick in southern Scotland. The company is currently in talks with Scottish Borders Council, contractors and others about the project, according to the Southern Reporter newspaper. The 2600m3 plant is set to create 30 jobs. It is hoped that the new unit will be ready by the end of 2020. IndiNature manufactures its rigid IndiBoard and IndiTherm batts insulation products from plant-based materials.

US: Owens Corning’s net earnings in the third quarter of 2019 took a dive to US$333m from US$376m, down by 11% year-on-year. Its insulation section reported earnings before interest and taxes of US$84m, down year-on-year by 11%. The section’s sales in the quarter amounted to US$693m, down by 2% year-on-year from US$710.

China/Japan: Researchers from Kyoto University, the University of Tokyo in Japan and Jiangsu Normal University in China have developed a new material that can selectively capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) molecules and convert them into ‘useful’ organic materials, including a precursor for polyurethane. The research project has been described in the journal Nature Communications.

The material is a porous coordination polymer (PCP, also known as a metal-organic framework), a framework consisting of zinc metal ions. The researchers tested their material using X-ray structural analysis and found that it can selectively capture only CO₂ molecules with ten times more efficiency than other PCPs. The material has an organic component with a propeller-like molecular structure, and as CO₂ molecules approach the structure, they rotate and rearrange to permit CO₂ trapping, resulting in slight changes to the molecular channels within the PCP. This allows it to act as molecular sieve that can recognise molecules by size and shape. The PCP is also recyclable; the efficiency of the catalyst did not decrease even after 10 reaction cycles.

After capturing the carbon, the converted material can be used to make polyurethane, a material with a wide variety of applications including insulation materials.