Synergy is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s programme for UK businesses who want to tackle complex chemistry topics collaboratively
Sustainability, regulation and technology developments will create new challenges for industry in the next 25 years. Proactive collaboration between industries to identify and tackle these challenges will develop solutions faster - ultimately saving time, cost and effort.
Synergy brings together businesses who face similar chemistry-related challenges and creates opportunities to solve them collaboratively:
- Reducing risks in research and development
- Bringing solutions to market that will benefit multiple industries
- Enabling knowledge sharing between experts
Topics
Polymers are widely used materials in liquid formulations across consumer products, food, paints and coatings and agriculture. Currently, industry mainly source these materials from fossil-derived feedstocks and they largely enter waste streams at the end of their life.
Could there be opportunities to maximise the value of these materials or source them from renewable feedstocks?
A Circular Economy for polymers in liquid formulations
In 2018 we held workshops with experts in academia and industry and identified four big opportunities for collaboration:
- Modification and development of new monomers and polymers
- Models and methods to design sustainable materials
- Scale-up of sustainable monomers
- Recovery and reuse of polymers
Download a copy of our report here.
Latest developments
In January 2020 we announced a partnership with CPI to continue developing ideas into opportunities for industry-led collaboration. Find out more about our partnership here.
Corrosion affects every aspect of life, from small-scale electronics to large-scale infrastructure. It already costs Europe €630.5 billion each year.
Transitioning to a low carbon economy, society becoming more environmentally conscious and potential future regulatory changes will require industry to adopt sustainable solutions for managing and preventing corrosion.
Sustainable non-metallic materials could offer a transformative solution, but right now, we know this technology is too high risk for businesses to adopt at scale.
Through-life performance of non-metallic materials for preventing corrosion
In 2019 we held workshops with experts in academia and industry to explore opportunities for collaboration in the following areas:
- How could we characterise and test material properties
- How could we detect failures before they occur?
- How could we predict where material degradation will take place?
We will produce a report on our initial findings in early 2020.
Latest developments
Read our news story here.
What should our next topic be?
We are seeking new topics from industry to explore in the future. They need to be:
- Relevant to multiple industries and sectors
- Complex chemical-science based challenges
- On topics that businesses are able to collaborate on
Email us your topic ideas.
