MORE | Fall 2024

Sustainable Polyurethane Coatings From Polyurethane Waste

This research seeks to find sustainable methods to repurpose consumer polyurethane (PU) waste. PU products are generated for use in consumer products, posing significant environmental risks once these products reach end-of-life, typically resulting in landfilling. Further, legacy PU topcoats pose human safety risks, as such materials are often synthesized using isocyanate-based chemistries. This approach aims to connect these two issues, offering low-energy and solvent-free methods to convert aliphatic PU waste into durable topcoats, sidestepping the need for hazardous isocyanates. This goal may be achieved using a heated extrusion process, where waste PU is incorporated with acrylate-functional carbamate decrosslinkers to form a PU resin, which is then UV-cured into a final topcoat.