INSPIRE: Engineering Sustainable Bio-adhesives from Algae for the Built Environment

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This INSPIRE project is jointly funded by the CMMI and CBET Divisions in the ENG Directorate, OISE, and the Office of Integrative Activities. This INSPIRE research studies the merits of using suitably balanced combinations of bio-mass sources to produce construction bio-adhesive. The biomass sources to be used are mostly algae cultivated in sewage and wastewater treatment plant facilities, woody biomass, and animal manure. The project simultaneously integrates environmental sustainability metrics into the bio-adhesive design process to enable sustainable developments focusing on the built environment. Considering the significant shortage of petroleum-based adhesives, the most accessible market for such bio-adhesives is envisioned to be the built environment such as building, roads and bridges. It should be noted that the price of petroleum-based adhesives such as bitumen often used in the built environment has been increasing dramatically within the last decade as its supplies have been shrinking significantly. Accordingly, bio-adhesives which are being developed in the EU and US could be a solution to reduce dependence of the construction industry on petroleum-based adhesives such as bitumen. In addition, production of bio-adhesives as proposed in this INSPIRE project can be a means of sequestering carbon from bio-mass waste which will be otherwise released back to the atmosphere as bio-mass decays. Therefore, in contrast to natural decay of bio-mass which is typically considered to be carbon neutral, the bio-adhesive process is carbon negative because more than 60% of carbon from bio-mass will be trapped in the bio-adhesive. Bio-adhesives will be produced from an array of molecular species found in bio-mass resources specially algae grown and harvested in wastewater treatment plants while simultaneously integrating environmental sustainability metrics as well as health and safety aspects. A thermochemical liquefaction process will be used, followed by solvent extraction, filtration and vacuum distillation to extract an array of molecular structures from a suitably balanced biomass feedstock. Density functional theory and molecular dynamics simulations along with multi-scale experimental characterization will be used to inform synthesis and engineering of bio-adhesive with desirable performance. Molecular level insights will provide in-depth understanding of structure-property relationship to tailor bio-adhesives' performance for the sustainable built environment while promoting bio-economy and resource conservation.