Eastman Chemical
Canvas Category OEM : Chemical
For 100 years, Eastman has created innovative products and solutions that touch people’s lives every day. Join us this year as we celebrate the legacy of the dedicated people who have turned great ideas into materials that enhance the quality of life in material way. For Eastman, it is about Innovation. Then. Now. Next.
Assembly Line
LLM-based Control Code Generation using Image Recognition
LLM-based code generation could save significant manual efforts in industrial automation, where control engineers manually produce control logic for sophisticated production processes. Previous attempts in control logic code generation lacked methods to interpret schematic drawings from process engineers. Recent LLMs now combine image recognition, trained domain knowledge, and coding skills. We propose a novel LLM-based code generation method that generates IEC 61131-3 Structure Text control logic source code from Piping-and-Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) using image recognition. We have evaluated the method in three case study with industrial P&IDs and provide first evidence on the feasibility of such a code generation besides experiences on image recognition glitches.
♻️ Plant-Based Plastics Gain Favor as Companies Pursue Sustainability Goals
Bioplastics are expanding faster than recycled plastic in some cases, such as in Asian countries like China and Japan that are mandating more ecologically friendly materials, nova-Institute founder Michael Carus said. Even if global plastic recycling rates someday reach 70% compared with around 9% today, bioplastics alongside materials made from captured carbon dioxide will have a big role to play as the world transitions away from fossil-fuel-based materials.
The strongest demand for bioplastics is currently from fashion and food-packaging companies, but interest is also rising from companies in cosmetics, electronics and more durable goods such as tools, Eastman Chemical’s Chief Technology Officer Chris Killian said. Some of the earliest adopters of bioplastics are fashion companies, including Lululemon, which has a goal to replace the majority of oil-based nylon with plant-based nylon by 2030.
This year, Dow struck an agreement with biomass refinery startup New Energy Blue to buy bioethylene made from the stalks and leaves of corn grown in Iowa. Dow will then make conventional and recyclable plastics from the material and sell to companies in transportation, footwear, and packaging.
Eastman to invest up to $1 billion to accelerate circular economy through building world’s largest molecular plastics recycling facility in France
Eastman plans to invest up to $1 billion in a material-to-material molecular recycling facility in France. This facility would use Eastman’s polyester renewal technology to recycle up to 160,000 metric tonnes annually of hard-to-recycle plastic waste that is currently being incinerated.
The investment would recycle enough plastic waste annually to fill Stade de France national football stadium 2.5 times, while also creating virgin-quality material with a significantly lower carbon footprint. Eastman is the largest investor at this year’s “Choose France” event, which is focused on attracting foreign investment to France.
This multi-phase project includes units that would prepare mixed plastic waste for processing, a methanolysis unit to depolymerize the waste, and polymer lines to create a variety of first-quality materials for specialty, packaging, and textile applications. Eastman also plans to establish an innovation center for molecular recycling that would enable France to sustain a leadership role in the circular economy. This innovation center would advance alternative recycling methods and applications to curb plastic waste incineration and leave fossil feedstock in the ground. The plant and innovation center would be expected to be operational by 2025, creating employment for approximately 350 people and leading to an additional 1,500 indirect jobs in recycling, energy and infrastructure.
How Eastman Strives for a Circular Plastics Economy
“Mechanical recycling—where you go out and take items like single-use bottles, chop, wash and re-meld them and put them back into textiles or bottles—can only really address a small portion of the plastics that are out there,” Crawford said. After a few cycles, the polymers in the products degrade and the process is no longer possible.
Instead, Eastman uses advanced, also known as molecular or chemical, recycling. “We unzip the plastic back to its basic building blocks, then purify those building blocks to create new materials,” Crawford said. This “creates an infinite loop because that polymer can go through that process time and time again.”