LOUDON, TENN. - Railcars filled with a new bioengineered corn-based polymer are already pulling out of DuPont's $100 million joint-venture factory with multinational agri-processor Tate & Lyle.

The next stop could be the carpet in your living room.

While other companies are working on several fronts to use more renewable resources, DuPont and Tate & Lyle consider themselves several steps ahead. They point to their plant, about 35 miles south of Knoxville, as "visible evidence that an economy based on renewable ingredients is possible."

DuPont scientists modified E. coli bacteria to use in converting corn sugar from an adjacent Tate & Lyle ethanol plant using a fermentation process, much like making beer.

The result is a clear liquid compound that can replace and improve upon petroleum-based ingredients in products, including fabrics, cosmetics, liquid detergents, boat hulls, ski boots and runway de-icers.

With customers already knocking at their door -- among them carpet maker Mohawk Industries and automaker Toyota -- and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on hand to christen the plant last week, DuPont and Tate & Lyle are finding it hard to curb their enthusiasm.

"It is the most significant invention since nylon," DuPont chairman and CEO Charles "Chad" Holliday Jr. said. This from the Wilmington, Del.-based company that invented nylon in 1935.

"The functionality of this product is what really differentiates it," Iain Ferguson, chief executive of London-based Tate & Lyle, said. "That gives us something which has a real edge."

The companies say their corn-based propanediol, or Bio-PDO, offers qualities superior to their petroleum counterparts.

Fabrics can take dyes more brilliantly, carpets are naturally stain-resistant, face creams are gentler to the skin, and airplane de-icers are biodegradable.

"The work that will be done here is on the leading age of a biotechnology revolution, which I believe will change the way we power our cars, our trucks, our homes and our businesses," Bodman said.

DuPont and Tate & Lyle are not alone, said Brent Erickson, an executive vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington, D.C.

However, he said that the commercialization of their Loudon plant is a significant development in what he termed the third wave of a biotech revolution, which began 20 years ago in medicine and then agriculture about a decade ago.

"It has gone beyond the doctor's office into consumer goods and other products that we never imagined," he said.

Holliday and Ferguson said they have factored rising corn prices, driven in part by growing demand for biofuels, into their equation.

Steven Mirshak, president of the DuPont and Tate & Lyle Bio-Products joint venture, said the price of the companies' Bio-PDO base is "similar" to nylon. A chemical version of the product was discovered in the 1940s but was too expensive to make.

"But with our new process using biology, we are able to produce PDO at a cost point where we can develop direct applications of its use in a variety of markets," he said, replacing petroleum counterparts.

Different perspective

Holliday said DuPont brings an unusual perspective to the corn supply situation. The company also owns the major corn seed brand Pioneer and is devoting considerable resources to increasing its productivity.

"If you look at the historical track on this in the sort of markets we are in, every time you get something like this where you get a price increase, you get further investment in agricultural production," Ferguson said. "And there is clearly considerable further potential to raise the yields."

Corn-based substitutes for petroleum are good for the environment, but experts have said they also contribute to a rise in global food import costs, making it harder for developing countries to feed their populations.

The Loudon plant has shipped 85 rail cars of the product since November, enough to meet demand though, still not at full capacity.

The companies expect the plant will produce 100 million pounds of the product annually, and they already are considering expansion and additional plants, possibly overseas.

The environmental effect of the project is significant. The companies say they will consume 40 percent less energy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 percent by producing PDO from corn sugar instead of petroleum-based feedstocks.

The energy savings would be more than 15 million gallons of gasoline per year, or enough to fuel more than 27,000 cars, the companies estimated.

All of that might help the planet, but it won't be enough to sell consumers.

"We know that consumers want to choose the ecologically better route. But they are not prepared to sacrifice" quality and price, Ferguson said.

"I think that is very understandable, unless there are incentives," Holliday said. "But we have a good product to start with."