Various performance and environmental attributes have made U.S. soy popular among product manufacturers, which has helped rapidly increase industrial demand for soy. In the last year alone, the United Soybean Board (USB) partnered with manufacturers to commercialize 45 new soy-based products.

“We’re looking for innovative work that will lead to a great new use for soybeans,” says USB Director Russ Carpenter, a soybean farmer from Trumansburg, N.Y. “We collaborate with industry on research projects and form partnerships that add value for everybody, both the manufacturers and soybean farmers.”

USB provides funding to manufacturers of industrial and consumer products to research, develop and commercialize new products that contain soy. Partnerships like these have helped bring hundreds of new soy products to the marketplace and increase industrial use of U.S. soy oil by 482 percent in the last 10 years. And USB continues to look for new opportunities to create more partnerships that support both innovation and demand for U.S. soy.

Manufacturers use soy oil as a replacement for petrochemicals to make their products more renewable and more environmentally friendly while maintaining or, in some cases, exceeding performance. Soy products are often more biodegradable and contain fewer volatile organic compounds than traditional products. Meanwhile, soy oil can provide excellent solvency, lubricity, strength and other attributes.

This year’s list includes new additions to some popular soy-based product categories, such as polyols, candle wax and industrial lubricants. But it also includes entries in some completely new categories like paintballs, gel mattress filling and nail-polish remover. Click here to browse USB’s Soy Products Guide, an online catalog of the thousands of currently available soy-based products.

The new soy-based products introduced in 2012 as a result of USB support include the following:

PLASTICS

• BetaFoam™ Renue – new cavity-sealing foam made with 25 percent renewable soy oil – Dow Automotive Systems
• AGROL® Prime, Star, Platinum and AO+ – four new soy-based polyurethane products from BioBased Technologies®, LLC. – Prime is slated for flexible slabstock formulations
• Soypex™ 100 – soy-based replacement of paraffin wax for candles – Galata Chemicals, Inc.
• Drapex® Alpha – a primary biobased plasticizer as a replacement for phthalate plasticizers in polyvinyl polymers – Galata Chemicals, LLC
• reFlex™ 100 – a biobased plasticizer as a replacement for phthalate plasticizers based on Battelle Institute technology and developed with ADM and the PolyOne Corporation, this product has been recognized by the USDA Biopreferred program and given a 94 percent biobased label
• Impact Gel™ – use of epoxidized soy oil to produce an impact gel for a variety of bedding applications – Impact Gel® Corporation
• VikoFlex™ 7010 – phthalate-free soy-based plasticizer – Arkema, Inc.
• InnoGreen™ Polyurethanes – a new family of 30-40 percent soy-based polyurethane cast elastomer systems – Innovative Polymers, Inc.

COATINGS /PRINTING INKS/SOLVENTS