Mannari Receives Grant to Develop Environmentally Compliant Materials
Vijaykumar Mannari
Vijaykumar Mannari of the EMU School of Engineering Technology has received a three-year grant for $401,452 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop novel polyester polyols and their derivatives to use in formulating environmentally friendly and sustainable coatings.
With depleting petroleum resources and increasing costs, scientists across the globe are challenged to come up with new ways to achieve sustainable development. Agro-based products are becoming important substitutes for petrochemicals in many industrial applications.
Mannari will design and develop a range of polyols and their value-added derivatives from such vegetable oils as soybean, canola, and corn. Ultimately, the research will develop a sustainable vegetable oil-based polyol technology platform that can serve as a low-cost alternative resource for developing a variety of environmentally compliant coatings and related products.
The majority of polymeric binders currently used in coatings, adhesives, sealants, and composites are petroleum-based, which makes these technologies unsustainable over the long term. Besides offering lower cost, vegetable oil-based technology promises sustainability and reduced carbon footprints in the final products.
