DuPont Brazil raises box with research projects

Brazil Innovations Center (CIB) is becoming an important tool of billing for Dupont. The company expects to add $ 210 million to the result of the Brazilian unit, over the next four years, from the projects developed on site.
The CIB was inaugurated in 2012 in Paulínia in São Paulo. On site, Dupont receives the demands of partner companies. According to the leader of the Innovation Center Brazil, Denise Parker, one of the differences of the CIB is that the designs are a co-creation between customers and Dupont.
She explains that when a company seeks the CIB, Dupont organizes a session of innovation which is an event of a full day of activities. In the morning, Dupont presents part of the solutions that has in its portfolio and market trends while the company details the your needs.
After this first meeting, the representatives of the company that seeks an innovation are taken on a tour of the facility of the CIB that lasts about an hour and a half. After these two activities, Dupont and the company visitor make a new generation of ideas meeting.
"We develop customized projects. The challenges companies are different, so the solutions must also be different for each case, "said Denise.
According to her, in some cases it is not necessary to develop a new product. "Innovation sessions allow identify needs that customers were not aware and for which we already have solutions available," says Denise.
So far, 788 companies were received by Dupont in the CIB. From these visits were developed 531 ideas, that if transformed into 91 new applications. Of these, 12 projects have been made possible commercially.
One of the highlights of the projects are already in operation is a new crankcase made from polymeric compounds which weighs half of traditionally used by the automotive industry for light vehicles which is made from aluminum. The crankcase is the oil storage container in motor vehicles.
According to Dupont, the product developed by them maintains the same characteristics and tests indicate that the resistance of the new product is higher than that of the traditional when subjected to extreme conditions of impact.
Another project developed by the CIB was the adaptation of the American technology that produces ethanol from corn to the Brazilian reality. Dupont began work on innovation in Brazil in 2013 from an idea patented by the company itself in the United States.
A group of researchers at DuPont Brazil and United States worked in collaboration to achieve a de facto technology for ethanol production from corn with attractive cost to the plants of sugarcane and without aggressive transformations in its structure.
The research culminated in a solution that integrates with sugar cane and maize which according to Dupont's reduces "dramatically investment and operational costs to sucroalcooleiras plants that eventually rely on energy and capacity left idle equipment, such as tanks of fermentation and distillation columns".
Besides the additional ethanol, corn processing provides an additional product known as corn bran, which can be used in animal nutrition, as a source of protein.
About the projects that are under development are the technologies for use of high performance materials for transportation of fruits and vegetables, advanced research on reduction of sugar, sodium and fat in foods, in addition to projects aimed at the development of new pesticides.
Global technology
The company not only with the technology developed in Brazil, because everything that is developed in the other 12 Dupont innovation centres in the world can be used by companies who sought solutions by Dupont affiliate of Brazil.
Denise account that Dupont Innovations centres operate way connected
"In addition to stimulate collaborative activities with our customers, the CIB allows a direct contact with more than 10 thousand scientists and engineers who make up the network of researchers at DuPont globally. It is an exchange of experiences is important, allowing you to identify solutions adopted in other countries and that can solve specific problems in strategic areas for DuPont in Brazil, "says Denise.
In addition to the CIB, Dupont has other 12 innovation in world centres dedicated to collaborative activities with partners from jail.