How to Make Money While Saving the Planet

PITTSBURGH—A University of Pittsburgh professor will speak today about the "counterintuitive" notion that a green business can be profitable, using the example of a spin-off company for which he serves as scientific advisor, at the 229th American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in San Diego.

Eric Beckman, Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering and codirector of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative in Pitt's School of Engineering, will talk about his experience licensing technology to spin-off company Northaven Specialty Chemicals.

In 2000, Pitt was given an intellectual property donation of a patent portfolio from Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. From 2001 to 2003, Pitt received money from the state of Pennsylvania to develop the ideas, and created its own intellectual property. The technology was licensed to Northaven in 2004.

The research is based on the monomer N-vinyl formamide (NVF), a low-toxicity material that can generate water-soluble polymers. NVF polymers react with certain sugars to form gels. "They're interesting gels because you don't have to do anything complicated," said Beckman. "You throw the polymer in with the sugar, and if you heat it, it'll go." Northaven is examining applications for the gels in paper coating, oil recovery, and other areas.

The company is headquartered in Sylvania, Ohio, and plans to situate its R&D laboratory in the University of Pittsburgh Applied Research Center. It is in the process of shipping samples to potential customers and building alliances with other firms. "That's what makes for a really good start-up—these guys know the business really well," said Beckman.

The main message Beckman will impart at the conference is that successful businesses can be created around green chemistry. "I think that if you say 'green,' people think, 'Oh, more expensive, impractical, can't do it,'" he said. "But if you do green chemistry right, you can make a good business out of it."

###

3/14/05/tmw