The American Chemical Society's 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Award winners include an electrodeposition technology that converts brine directly into pure lithium-metal anodes, and a bio-based fire suppressant formulated from agricultural soybean waste that contains no PFAS chemicals.
ACS recognized Pure Lithium Corp. with a Chemical and Process Design for Circularity honor, citing the company’s Brine to Battery method. This process produces 99.9% pure battery-ready lithium-metal anodes in one step using electrodeposition technology from real-world brines, according to an ACS news release.
The Brine to Battery method reduces water and energy use and enables co-location of feedstock, extraction and manufacturing, accelerating domestic production of advanced batteries, ACS noted.
Cross Plains Solutions received the ACS award for the Design of Safer and Degradable Chemicals category. Cross Plains produces a fire-suppression foam consisting of defatted soybean meal and biobased ingredients that can extinguish Class A and Class B fires. The product, called SoyFoam, contains no PFAS or related fluorine chemicals.
Others recognized include Scripps Research Institute's Keary M. Engle for developing a new class of air-stable nickel catalysts that efficiently convert simple feedstocks into complex molecules; Merck & Co. for its biocatalytic process to prepare the nucleoside islatravir, an investigational antiviral for the treatment of people living with HIV-1; Novaphos Inc. for its thermal process to recover and reuse sulfur from phosphogypsum; and Future Origins for its single-step, whole-cell fermentation process to produce C12/C14 fatty alcohols from renewable plant-derived sugars.
The annual awards, announced Aug. 25, recognize outstanding efforts in cleaner pharmaceutical manufacturing, circular battery production, PFAS-free fire suppression, waste reuse and low-carbon consumer products.
ACS will host the 2025 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards ceremony at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., Sept. 3.
Nominations for the 2026 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards will open in late September 2025.
