DuPont Looking to Displace Fossil Fuels as Building Blocks of Chemicals

Nestled away in a small room on DuPont’s 150-acre research center in Wilmington, Del., robotic arms fill tiny tubes with gelatinous material that was extracted from corn and soybean plants. Other metallic arms will soon dip and measure and deconstruct each sample, spewing forth a list of its attributes and traits.

Only a fistful

All of them are chasing the same holy grail: bio-based substances that can replace oil and gas as building blocks for chemicals. “We figure out what works in theory, and then we see what works in practice,” Alexander D. Kopatsis, a research associate, said.

E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, unlike most chemical companies, has moved the quest for bio-based raw materials off the wish list and onto the to-do agenda. The company has allocated nearly 10 percent of its $1.3 billion research budget to extracting ingredients from carbohydrates