Connor E. Williamson
Chemical engineering
Hometown: Scottsdale, Arizona, United States
Graduation date: Spring 2025
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.
Mentor: Kailong Jin
It’s hip to be square.
Students presenting projects at the Fulton Forge Student Research Expo are encouraged to download this personal QR code and include it within your poster. This allows expo attendees to explore more about your project and about you in the future.
Right click the image to save it to your computer.