It's easy to get your mind around the United States' dependence
on petroleum when you're standing at the pump, filling
your car's gas tank. But another petroleum product sits
right before your eyes.
The paint that protects your car from the sun, wind, rain
and snow (and if you're lucky, makes your car look good,
too) is made with petroleum-based polymers.
 |
COATINGS CONNECTIONS: (above, from left)
Vijay
Mannari, an associate professor in the School
of
Engineering Technology, and Sentilkumar
Rengasamy,
a graduate student from Chennai, India,
research
ways to use vegetables oils from
agricultural grains
to develop earth-friendly and
sustainable industrial
paints. Mannari recently
received a three-year
$401,452 grant from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
to conduct the research. |
At least today it is.
Vijay Mannari, an Eastern Michigan University associate
professor, launched research in January that could lead
to heavy-duty paints that also are homegrown, sustainable
and easier on the environment.
With a three-year, $401,452 grant from the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) , Mannari is researching
ways to use vegetable oils from agricultural grains to
develop earth-friendly and sustainable industrial paints
that are durable enough to protect the outside of your
car, the inside of your washer and dryer, and other such
surfaces.
Mannari, a polymers and coatings technology specialist
in the School of Engineering Technology, is focusing
his research on soybean, corn and canola oils — all
common crops in the U.S.
Using the EMU Coatings Research Institute's state-of-the-art
facilities, Mannari and his graduate students will put
the oils through various chemical processes to create derivatives
that will then be converted into polymers — the
film-forming component in paint that holds all of the other
components together and makes the paint stick to surfaces.
In some cases, the derivatives in the middle step will
be completely new inventions, themselves, Mannari said.
Because the goal is to create a paint that doesn't harm
the environment, researchers will pay close attention to
the process, designing solvents and other volatile materials
out of the process.
Although scientists have been searching for ways to make
low-VOC (volatile organic chemicals) paints for decades,
they have yet to solve some of the puzzles associated with
making industrial paints from vegetable oils, Mannari said.
But vegetable oils also have properties that make them
well suited to the task. Such oils are very water resistant,
and they spread very well into a smooth, glossy film.
There are several different methods used to cure paints,
and vegetable oil's texture works with all of them, giving
Mannari and his lab lots of options and combinations to
explore.
The possibilities of vegetable oils as a paint component
initially piqued Mannari's interest during his postdoctoral
research at Southwest Texas State University. But, it
was work covered by a 2007 EMU spring-summer research award
that laid the groundwork for the USDA grant proposal. The
School of Engineering Technology kicked in $500 to purchase
lab chemicals for the spring-summer research.
"Using that award, I explored the possibilities of this," Mannari
said. "It helped me in writing a big proposal, so I'm building
on to that exploratory work."
