Lubrizol
De-carbonising the chemical industry
Thanks to an innovative University of Warwick business partnership, Professor David Haddleton, Department of Chemistry, is teaming up with the US-based company Lubrizol to develop new, sustainable manufacturing processes. Their ambition is to reduce the carbon footprint of Lubrizol products, making them more sustainable and attractive to eco-conscious consumers and brands.
Partnering for performance and sustainability
Professor Haddleton is passionate about sustainability in his research and has been working with Lubrizol since 2010, creating self-healing polymers to extend the life of automotive oils. Through combining the University's research expertise and polymer analysing equipment with Lubrizol’s chemical manufacturing excellence,the partnership aims to improve material performance and sustainability, while not increasing costs
Tackling business-led challenges
Extending this established relationship into a partnershipwiththe University of Nottingham has been rewarded with joint funding,from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Lubrizol. Their groundbreaking research programme, called SCIENCE (Sustainable Chemicals Innovations Enabling Net Carbon Emissions), is now tackling a series of business-led research challenges by designing smarter molecules and improving chemistries and energy-resilient processes. This will reduce the amount of processing steps needed to manufacture complex molecules and polymers.
A carbon neutral toolkit
By collaborating and using the latest sustainable chemistry techniques the partnership is developinga toolkit to transform all aspects of additive synthesis-frominitialdiscovery through to the manufacturing of high-value molecules.To make complex and essential molecules and polymers in a sustainable way, the partnership has had to go back to basics to ensure that they can become carbon neutral through exploiting atom-efficient catalysis and renewable resources.
“The companies we work with, including Lubrizol, come to us with their problems because not only do we have probably the best set of equipment foranalysingpolymers in Europe, but also because we can help them understand what’s happening with expertise they just don’t have internally.”
Professor David Haddleton, University of Warwick
“Developing new sustainable ways to make our additives with Warwick and Nottingham will ultimately lead us to lowering our environmentalfootprint andwill also help the manufacturers we supply have some clarity in their supply chain of chemicals.”
Mark Davies, Senior Director of Research and Development, Lubrizol
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