Williamsburg, VA, July 28--Technology developed at the College of William and Mary, designed to reduce environmental hazards associated with PVC, is a step closer to the market, as a leading U.S. corporation has signed a license to commercialize a class of safer additives.
The college isn't releasing the name of the company that licensed the technology.
PVC—polyvinyl chloride— is the second most widely used plastic in the world, found in vinyl siding, flooring, piping, wall coverings and wire coatings. In order to prevent degradation upon heating, heat stabilizers are added to PVC. In today’s industry, usage of many of the most effective additives is restricted because the substances contain toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and lead.
The proprietary new class of environmentally friendly stabilizers was invented at William and Mary by a team led by William Starnes, the Floyd Dewey Gottwald, Sr., Professor of Chemistry. Starnes says his new organic stabilizers, which belong to a class of compounds called ester thiols, have the potential to replace the heavy-metal PVC additives now in use.
"These stabilizers are superior because they don’t contain toxic metals and work just as well as, or better than, the stabilizers that do," Starnes said. "These materials could be of enormous benefit to people throughout the world."
Starnes was assisted in developing these proprietary thiol stabilizers by a group which included postdoctoral fellow Bin Du and Elizabeth Culyba, a chemistry major who graduated with Highest Honors in 2004. The patented thiols not only are excellent stabilizers, but also can be used as plasticizers when a product calls for flexible PVC.
The licensee is putting Starnes’ thiols through a battery of pre-production tests to determine which of the tens of thousands of PVC products will be most appropriate for the new stabilizer/plasticizer technology.
"We’re excited to have this technology licensed," said Jason McDevitt, director of technology transfer at William and Mary. "We’d like to see a commercial product soon, hopefully by 2007."
Funding for the research was provided by the Edison Polymer Innovation Corporation, an Ohio-based organization dedicated to research and intellectual property activities in polymer science and engineering.
