Two innovative products from The Dow Chemical Company recently received 2017 Edison Awards. The Edison Awards honor excellence in new product and service development, marketing, human-centered design, and innovation. A silver Edison Award went to Dow’s ACCUTRACE S10 Molecular Fuel Marker used to combat fuel tax evasion. Dow’s CANVERA Polyolefin Dispersions for metal can coating received a bronze award.

“With a seat at our customers’ design table, we continue to bring forward breakthrough innovations that solve complex problems and serve the market,” said A.N. Sreeram, senior vice president, R&D, and chief technology officer for Dow. “Edison was a prolific inventor whose success is linked in part to his business sense and understanding of societal needs. For Dow, we continue to see the greatest success in delivering products that are meeting customer needs and solving the world’s most pressing challenges. We are grateful for this recognition of our market-disrupting products.”

Selected from hundreds of finalists, the winners were announced on April 20 at the Edison Awards Gala in New York City. Learn more about these award-winning technologies below.

Dow ACCUTRACE S10 Molecular Fuel Marker empowers governments to fight back against the revenue loss and dangerous environmental impact of criminal fuel tax evasion. ACCUTRACE S10 is highly resistant to removal through known fuel laundering techniques, authenticates petroleum products for their intended use, such as agriculture and home heating, and prevents them being sold into higher taxed uses, such as vehicles for road transport. ACCUTRACE™ and the Falcon Analytical CALIDUS™ MT transportable gas chromatography (GC) unit form a robust fuel marking and detection system that allows governments to enforce tax law and prevent criminal activity. It is highly resistant to naturally occurring or illicit laundering of the marker out of fuel.

“We are honored to have the ACCUTRACE S10 fuel marker recognized as an Edison Awards winner,” said Ester Baiget, business president, Dow Industrial Solutions. “This highly respected accolade recognizes not only the strength of our market-driven innovation, but also the diligent collaboration between Dow and Falcon, supplier of the CALIDUS™ portable GC detection unit. This concerted effort to combat fuel fraud demonstrates the power of chemistry and science to address real world challenges.”

Dow CANVERA Polyolefin Dispersions provides progressive food and beverage brand owners with a can coating made from polyethylene resins, replacing epoxy coating systems using BPA, bisphenols, epoxies and other materials of concern to consumers and regulators. CANVERA uses Dow’s proprietary and patented BLUEWAVE™ dispersion technology to create an aqueous polyolefin dispersion, applied directly to the interior metal surface of cans using the same equipment as current epoxy coatings. CANVERA makes a very thin, protective, thermoplastic lining with excellent food and flavor retention, adhesion, corrosion protection, and film flexibility. CANVERA polyolefin dispersions utilize the existing can-making infrastructure, facilitating world-wide adoption.

“Dow Coating Materials has been working on this progressive technology for several years, and it is really exciting to finally see it being adopted by the market place,” said Neil Carr, business president, Dow Coating Materials, Performance Monomers and Plastic Additives. “CANVERA Polyolefin Dispersions offer a genuine breakthrough in can coatings, and are a great testimony of our business’s ability to deliver science-based, sustainable solutions that aim to improve people’s lives.”

The Edison Awards namesake, Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931), was an American-born inventor and businessman. Over the course of his life, Edison received a staggering 1,093 U.S. patents for market-disrupting technologies such as the electric light bulb and phonograph.

Dow shares in Edison’s passion for ingenuity and patent productivity; the Company was named for the sixth consecutive year to the Clarivate Analytics Top 100 Global Innovators List, which recognizes corporations and institutions around the world that are at the heart of innovation, as measured by a series of proprietary patent-related metrics.

Dow’s research and development engine was responsible for 754 U.S. patents granted in 2016; the eighth consecutive annual increase and an all-time record high for Dow. Such patents, based on Dow innovation, help drive patent-advantaged sales that represent more than 20 percent of Dow’s revenue.