YOU'RE ALWAYS WELCOME AT BIOFURAN MATERIALS!
About BioFuran Materials Chemicals
BioFuran Materials LLC is a manufacturer of mono-, di-, and tri-carboxylate salts, soaps, gels, esters, and ionic liquids. Our carboxylic acids include formates, acetates, glycolates, oxalates, propionates, lactates, butyrates, hydroxybutyrates, fumarates, malonates, malates, tartrates, valerates, ketoglutarates, glutarates, tiglates, sorbates, levulinates, citrates, aconitates, glutamates, heptanoates, caprylates, sebacates, nonanoates, caprates, suberates, benzoates, nicotinates, anisates, salicylates, histidinates, arginates, phenolates, phytates, mandelates, oleates, laurates, ricinoleates, linolenates, behenates, and stearates. These products can be used as buffers, precipitants, preservatives, corrosion inhibitors, biorefinery agents, antimicrobials, analytical reagents, life science reagents, cosmetic ingredients, and fragrance oils. More importantly, these carboxylates are less toxic, biodegradable and decompose to release carbon dioxide and water only.
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Our Vision is to convert non-value discarded sugar-rich food wastes to renewable chemical feedstocks and reduce dependence on petroleum-based chemicals.
BioFuran Materials hopes to fulfill this vision by developing carboxylate-based chemicals utilizing abundant, sugar-rich food wastes, produced locally, which if left to freely decompose at landfills, produce toxins that contaminate waterways and the atmosphere. Importantly, our carboxylates are designed to be user-friendly alternatives to potentially harmful chlorides, fluorides, bromides, iodides, sulfates, and nitrates; that we have become accustomed on our roads, schools, airports, homes, businesses, hospitals, gyms, and everywhere else.
Who We Are
At BioFuran Materials, we believe that chemical manufacturing plays a significant role in shaping the future of the environment, the quality of life and resource availability. We subscribe to the notion that the mainstream chemicals should be constantly evaluated to determine how well they meet the needs of a growing population in a world of scarce resources and growing environmental challenges. These notions clearly point to an ever-growing need for resourcefulness in the chemical manufacturing to provide adequately for immediate and/or future chemical needs.
We are championing the adoption of circular approaches in chemical manufacturing. We create higher value from non-value materials and we offer materials anchored on good environmental stewardship while enhancing our competitive credentials to win customer trust in the marketplace. We consider our employees, local communities, environmental regulators, supply-chain partners and customers as key stakeholders.
What We Stand For
BioFuran Materials envision a future where known toxic chemicals are withdrawn from daily uses and are replaced with more planet-friendly alternatives. We take pride in developing simple synthetic methods, using inexpensive starting materials, most of which are responsibly derived from discarded food wastes, with carboxylates manufacturing done in water, and using carefully crafted methods that generates little to no toxic byproducts. We consider process greening as an asset in our operations and we are committed to our founding objective to supply food waste derived carboxylates.
Core Values
Quality, integrity, and service are our core values. We strive to achieve these by:
1. Treating our customers with utmost respect
2. Creating a safe and enjoyable work environment for our employees
3. Bringing team members’ energy and enthusiasm in executing each task, whether routine or new
4. Celebrating each successfully completed project, whether big or small
5. Building a team with the freedom and support to think outside the box
6. Developing meaningful relationships with all of stakeholders; from suppliers, research partners, regulators, distributors, customers, etc.
Products that Change the Future
Our products are crafted to minimize the negative impact of today’s harsh chemicals on the environment. We strive to make the world a better place, by progressively replacing just one bad chemical with a safer chemical alternative. Our carboxylate reagent chemicals are less toxic than the fluoride, bromide, iodide, chloride, sulfate, and nitrate salts. Our safer carboxylates can be used as key ingredient substitutes in agriculture, home care, detergents, household cleaning, de-icing, tanning, fluid drilling, fuel cells, water purification, ceramics, paint, air conditioning, refrigeration, etc.
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The Pittsburgh Magazine of September 2019 noted that 412 Food Rescue recovered 6.8 million pounds of discarded food from retailers, bakeries, large catering events, and commercial food producers. This statistic represents a small portion of food that is recovered, implying that a large portion ends up at the local landfills where they pollute local environments. Coupled to food-borne pollution is rising levels of halide (fluoride, chloride, bromide, and iodide) salts commonly used in food, for deicing pavements and roads after snowfall, in water treatment as water softeners, etc. About salt-based pollution, the Water Resources Center of University of Minnesota noted that chloride salt levels are increasing at alarming rates in rivers, lakes, streams, and groundwater across the Unites States. The deicing chloride salts alone accounts for over 400,000 tons/year. While deicing rock salt is inexpensive to purchase, it can have a high environmental cost, as elevated chloride levels are toxic to many plant and aquatic species. The environmental cost of chloride salts is further compounded by other over-utilized sulfates and nitrates, which are equally toxic.
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To address the environmental burden of conventional salts and food waste, finding alternatives to conventional salts and reducing quantities of wasted foods destined for landfills maybe viable options. BioFuran Materials LLC is launching scalable processes for recovering and utilizing all discarded sugar-rich foods as primary raw materials for manufacturing industrial chemicals that can displace some mainstream petrochemicals including most conventional salts. Doing so, BioFuran Materials hopes to transform the sourcing of chemical raw materials by intensifying the use of local resources particularly those that are prematurely rejected along the food supply chain. Our mission is to build a sustainable chemical manufacturing enterprise that delivers the best benefits to all stakeholders by lowering the cost of chemicals, creating new revenue streams for wasted foods, and promoting clean cities.
Why Carboxylates?
Recent ground-breaking findings in platinum-based chemotherapy drug design offers foundational insight on the efficacy of platinum alkanoate salts as better analogues of the traditional platinum dichloride salts. In this work, drug designers noted significant improvements in the aqueous solubility (enabling faster healing) and chemical stability (ensuring drug safety) on drugs when acetates and/or other alkanoates were added. As a result, alkanoate-based chemotherapy prodrugs such as oxaliplatin, satraplatin, carboplatin, and nedaplatin are saving lives today! Based on this success story, similar material design concepts rooted on alkanoates-for-chlorides strategies are slowly gaining acceptance in the snow & ice control as well as desiccant & coolant sectors where chloride salts such as rock salt have maintained incumbency for too long. In this context, BioFuran Materials believes that the full benefits of the alkanoate strategy should be adopted far and wide. However, BioFuran Materials subscribes to a narrow focus targeting only short and medium chain carboxylates.
BioFuran Materials also believes that the non-polluting carboxylates can generate a large pool of known and new, currently unavailable materials with exemplary uses in critical applications. Worth noting are the metal salts of butyrates (C4), valerates (C5) and levulinates (C5) which are known to form conductive ionic liquid crystals when melted, where applications exist in switches, molecular sensors, displays, and optical connectors. Alkali metal carboxylates too can be used to prepare buffers used in life-saving biochemical studies. In some energy-saving applications, the low carbon (C1-C2) alkali metal carboxylates or combinations of two or more carboxylate salts can be used as effective heat-storage materials.