Our world is changing faster than ever before. That means businesses are facing new and tougher chemistry-based challenges; often affecting multiple industries and supply chains.
We know that collaboration can develop better solutions to these challenges. We work with businesses to identify opportunities to take collaborative action, which reduces risks, cuts costs and brings solutions to market faster.
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The UK composite industry is expected to grow significantly by 2035 with demand increasing across aerospace, defence, construction, automotive, renewable energy, oil & gas, rail and marine. Composites have the potential to move these industries towards a net zero emissions economy; however, they too have their challenges in becoming more sustainable.
Shifting to renewable feedstocks, maximising material lifetimes, and eliminating waste are just some of the big challenges that industry are facing.
We are partnering with the Sustainable Composites Partnership to investigate the role of chemistry in developing sustainable composite solutions. We will publish a report in early 2023.
Polymers are widely used materials in liquid formulations for markets including home and personal care, wastewater treatment and agriculture.
They offer specific functionality to products such as stability and thickening, or they can improve the look and feel of products to make them more attractive to consumers.
However, industry often sources these polymers from fossil-derived feedstocks and they enter waste streams at the end of their life.
Could there be opportunities to maximise the value of these materials?
We are campaigning alongside industry to make polymers in liquid formulations (PLFs) more sustainable. Take a closer look at our work here
Corrosion affects every aspect of life, from small-scale electronics to large-scale infrastructure. It costs the global economy $2.5 trillion each year.
It is not sustainable to keep protecting, repairing and replacing corroding metals. Chemical scientists, working with experts across disciplines and industries, could make this a problem of the past – by developing non-metallic alternatives to traditional metals.
Non-metallics are currently too risky for industry to adopt at scale. Could we increase industry’s confidence in these materials?
In 2019, we ran workshops that brought together 25 expert perspectives from academia and industry, representing aerospace, oil and gas, construction, paints and coatings, defence and manufacturing industries.
Read our news story here
