Dow Wins Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award

INTUNE, a breakthrough compatibalization technology from The Dow Chemical Company, was recently honored with the 43rd Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Achievement Award, a prestigious biennial recognition that honors the most noteworthy chemical-engineering technology commercialized anywhere in the world.

INTUNE is the second disruptive innovation made using Dow’s proprietary olefin block copolymer platform, an advance in catalytic science and reaction engineering. INTUNE makes it possible to combine polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) and provide the best benefits of each material, while minimizing individual trade-off properties. It provides new-to-the-world flexibility for blending and bonding these important polymers.

“INTUNE is a testament to our truly world-class team of scientists and engineers around the Dow world who continue to take risks, deploy high throughput research capabilities and challenge the very definition of what is possible in the plastics industry,” said A.N. Sreeram, senior vice president of Research and Development and chief technology officer at Dow.

INTUNE allows designers and fabricators to engineer materials with blends or multi-layer structures containing PE and PP that take advantage of their common attributes such as low cost, low density and environmental resistance; while combining their separate attributes in ways never before thought possible, like toughness, ease of processing, stiffness and high temperature resistance. It can also allow for continued property retention with the addition of polyethylene or polypropylene recycled content.

Proprietary chain shuttling technology enables Dow to be the sole producer of olefin block copolymers. INTUNE is the latest innovation derived from the continued evolution of the company’s revolutionary INSITE catalyst, which has also enabled other polymer brands that continue to transform the plastics industry, including ENGAGE Polyolefin Elastomers, NORDEL EPDM and AFFINITY Polyolefin Elastomers.

“More than ever, our innovation investments are targeted to markets and applications where our differentiation is valued and that enable Dow and our customers to win,” said Mauro Gregorio, business president for Dow’s Elastomers, Electrical and Telecommunications, and Feedstocks and Energy businesses. “INTUNE is a testament to that. It demonstrates our ability to use industry-leading high throughput capabilities to rapidly bring higher performing, proprietary, more sustainable solutions to our customers and consumers alike.”

Dow and INTUNE join a distinguished roster of past Kirkpatrick winners honored during the more than 80-year tradition of this unbiased selection process for one of the highest honors that a CPI company can receive.

The award is the latest in several recent innovation achievements for Dow. In June, scientists from Dow who led the development of INSITE catalyst were named among the 2015 “Heroes of Chemistry,” a prestigious award given by the American Chemical Society (ACS). Seven of Dow’s latest innovations were also recently named to R&D Magazine’s 2015 R&D 100 Awards, which celebrate the most significant technology inventions of the past year. Dow was once again the leading innovator, with the greatest number of finalists and winners of any single developer.