Colorants

Greener Solutions 2025: Safer Chemicals for Long Term Fire Retardants

Link to Final Report

Link to Final Presentation

Long-term flame retardants (LTFRs) are a critical tool for slowing the spread of wildfires, but the chemicals currently used—primarily ammonium phosphate—can wash into nearby waterways, contributing to eutrophication and harming aquatic ecosystems. Additional formulation components, including synthetic dyes and trace metals, raise further environmental and occupational health concerns. This project...

Greener Solutions 2016: Modular polymers with Steelcase

The Steelcase team focused on one area of the current plastic manufacturing process that would require changes to execute polymer modularity — additives. The team chose the colorants used for the polypropylene Node chair line as the baseline for substitution and as a test for the concept of modularity. These colorants can be hazardous. For example, carbon black, a common colorant, is a well-known occupational hazard and probable carcinogen. The team was faced with two distinct but entwined parts of the challenge: finding more benign materials, like...

Greener Solutions 2016: Safer PHA/PHB colorants for marine buoys

Mango Materials, of Berkeley, CA, makes the biopolymers PHA (Poly-hydroxyalkanoate ) and PHB (poly-hydroxybutryate) from waste methane. The Mango team was challenged to investigate colorants because while PHA is biodegradable, many of the substances added to it for application performance are not and some of the currently used industrial colorants have properties that are cause for concern. Iron oxide red, for example, is persistent in the environment and has shown evidence of carcinogenic effects.

The Mango team researched several areas in...