STEM-In-Action Spring Scoop: Antastic Acids

Back in the Fall we caught up with all of our STEM-In-Action grant recipient teams to see how their projects were progressing, post-NJ&EE. If you’re just tuning in, the U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-In-Action Grant awards eCYBERMISSION teams up to $5,000 to develop their projects into mature and scalable solutions in their community. With Virtual Judging beginning this week, we are circling back to find out how the SIA grant winners have used this year to take their projects to the next level. This week we’re catching up with team Antastic Acids. Here’s the scoop!

--

We are team Antastic Acids from Madison, AL. Our team consists of Puja, Neha, and Pranav. In the 2019 eCYBERMISSION competition, we designed a process to separate and recover the individual components of multilayered plastic packaging with the use of formic acid and ultrasonic cavitation. With the STEM-In-Action grant, we have begun the process of implementing our solution into our Madison community. The grant has allowed us to take our project to the next level and file a patent for our process by providing the required funds involved in purchasing equipment for further experimentation and paying the patent application and patent attorney fees. We identified a local company that manufactures multilayered plastics and is working on solutions to recycle them, so we are planning to approach them with our process after obtaining a patent. Polyplex and other similar local companies could also be prospective clients, and once we receive our provisional patent we can collaborate with them to recycle multi-layered packaging efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner.

We have completed the necessary experiments with the ultrasound horn that was purchased with the help of the STEM-In-Action grant. The ultrasonic horn that we bought is capable of sonicating the multilayered packaging pieces at a power of 450 watts. It came with a controller that can adjust the amount of power given for the sonication treatment. This was very helpful in our patent application as we used it to gather data on the amount of time necessary to fully separate the layers of the packaging with different amounts of power. We conducted an efficiency test by sonicating the multilayered packaging at different levels of ultrasonic power. We found that treatment at a higher power decreased the time for the treatment exponentially, and concluded that using higher power processes is more efficient regarding total energy usage. This is the evidence that we used to set our solution apart from previous patents since it proves that the use of ultrasonic cavitation is critical in shortening the length of treatment and therefore lowering energy usage.

Meeting with our Patent Attorney Cynthia Wright

After the patent attorney reviewed our patent draft, she gave us helpful feedback on how we could maximize the scope of the claims while getting them approved. We incorporated her suggestions into our patent application and filed it with the USPTO. The patent will be reviewed within the next year. We hope to get the patent application for our process approved so that our design can be implemented in recycling plants in our community and across the nation. We are excited about our pending patent as the next step forward is seeking collaboration with recycling companies to, ideally, bring forth an even greater environmental, and possibly economic, impact on our community.

--

To see the potential impact these students’ idea will bring not only to their community, but to recycling plants across the country, is extraordinary. It’s moments like these where the team here at Mission Control is consistently impressed by the intelligence and persistence that our eCM students have to make the world a better place. Keep on changing the world, Antastic Acids!

-Mission Control

x