During the 2025 SOSV Climate Summit on a panel entitled “Is Blue is the New Green?” (watch it here), OzoneBio CEO Khorcheska Batyrova announced that the company has achieved a world first: producing biobased Nylon 6,6 at scale.
Nylon 6,6 is one of the world’s most ubiquitous and durable polymers used to make hard plastic parts in automobiles, aircraft, insulators, suitcases, sports equipment, carpets and performance apparel. However, its traditional production comes with a drawback: it also produces adipic acid, which is a major source of Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) emissions. N₂O is widely recognized as being 300x worse than CO₂ as a greenhouse gas, and is a major contributor to atmospheric ozone holes. While traditional Nylon manufacturing plants can scrub their N₂O emissions at the smokestack, doing so is expensive and adds significantly to the cost. For this reason, a commercially scalable biobased Nylon 6,6 has been a “holy grail” target for the materials industry.
OzoneBio’s Nylon 6,6 pellets were showcased this fall at several global trade fairs, including Intertextile Shanghai and Biofabricate London in September, and the K-Show in Dusseldorf in October.
Unlike competitors that rely on precision fermentation from sugar feedstocks, OzoneBio takes a radically different approach. Operating out of a former Shell chemical plant in Calgary, the company produces biobased chemicals from wood tar through pyrolysis and a proprietary environmentally friendly chemistry process. Because this approach avoids expensive fermentation infrastructure, OzoneBio’s biobased Nylon 6,6 is far less CAPEX-intensive and can even reduce the “green premium.” The company also generates carbon credits from the biochar created during wood-pulp pyrolysis.
During the panel, Batyrova explained that OzoneBio has produced 50 kilos of emissions-free adipic acid this fall, and will make up to one ton by year’s end. Its purity has been validated by four global chemical manufacturers, each of which successfully polymerized it into pellets of Nylon 6,6. The University of Georgia further confirmed via isotope analysis that the product is 100% biobased. In addition, a leading apparel fiber manufacturer has spun the pellets into nylon fibers meeting all required specifications, demonstrating clear readiness for industrial applications.
Batyrova announced that OzoneBio is also making a “blue” low-emissions Nylon 6,6. This version of Blue Nylon is not made from wood oil, but rather made from conventional petrochemical precursors. In this case, the catalytic synthesis of adipic acid, which normally releases all of the N₂O, is replaced by their unique environmentally friendly chemistry synthesis. This eliminates N₂O emissions.
“In fact we release a lot of oxygen instead,” she explained. “Our new approach of making Blue N₂O free adipic acid through environmentally friendly chemical synthesis that releases only oxygen as a side product should quickly become the standard in the industry worldwide. Because it really isn’t any more expensive than what’s been used for the last 90 years.”
In climate terms, OzoneBio’s “Green” Nylon 6,6 achieves a 96% reduction in CO₂ emissions, while its “Blue” Nylon 6,6 cuts emissions by up to 70%.
Check out the full “Is Blue is the New Green?” from SOSV Climate Tech Summit here.