2025 STRP Recipients
Plascrete: Upcycling Waste Plastic as a Value-Added Product in Cement Mixtures
PI: Dr Rachel Cook (Assistant Professor). Team: Rafia Ayub (Graduate), William Goetz (Undergraduate)Concrete is the world’s most utilized man-made material, prized for its strength, durability, fire resistance, and versatility. However, the cement used to bind concrete is costly, and in the U.S. construction sector, cheaper fillers are often used as partial substitutes. At the same time, plastic pollution has reached alarming levels: only 9% of plastic is recycled in the U.S., nearly half ends up in landfills, and more than one-fifth is mismanaged or discarded in nature. By 2050, experts project that plastic in the oceans will outweigh fish by weight. Plascrete seeks to tackle both challenges by upcycling waste plastic into cement mixtures, transforming an abundant pollutant into a valuable material. The team is developing milling procedures to grind various plastic types into micrometer-scale particulates, integrate them into concrete mixtures, and study their properties. This innovation could reduce plastic waste, cut construction costs, and pave the way for more sustainable building practices.
Lime Semiconductor: Liquid Metal for Semiconductors
PI: Dr Nicholas Baker (Assistant Professor)Modern power semiconductors are typically manufactured using solid metals that require high temperatures and pressures during manufacturing. These devices often fail due to thermo-mechanical stress, limiting their efficiency, durability, and cost-effectiveness. LIME Semiconductor is pioneering a new approach by using room-temperature liquid metal pastes with enhanced viscosity, which virtually eliminates failure from thermo-mechanical stress. This breakthrough not only improves performance and reliability but also reduces the size, weight, and cost of semiconductor systems. LIME’s technology has the potential to reshape the future of electronics, from consumer devices to large-scale energy systems.properties. This innovation could reduce plastic waste, cut construction costs, and pave the way for more sustainable building practices.
2024 STRP Recipients
Modular Wireless Battery System Technology for Electrified Fleet Vehicles
PI: Jaber Abu-Qahoug, Professor, College of EngineeringThis STRP entails devising a system that facilitates easy swapping of battery modules in EVs. The main objective is to make electrified transportation available to a larger number of people, especially those from disadvantaged communities, by addressing the challenges and shortcomings of existing technologies. Another objective of this STRP technology is to make battery packs retired from electric vehicles ready for use in second use/life applications with minimum repurposing effort and time (to reduce material waste and increase technoeconomic viability). Both objectives support transportation electrification and renewable energy use and therefore help in addressing the climate change challenge.
Sequestering CO2 and producing low-carbon concrete using a biomolecule-regulated pre-carbonation method
PI: Jialai Wang, Professor, College of EngineeringProfessor Wang aims to develop a commercially viable method of using captured CO2 as a performance-enhancing additive in concrete thereby reducing the carbon footprint of concrete. The massive volume of concrete used in construction each year offers one of the largest sinks for CO2 through a mineralization process. To unlock the carbon sequestration potential of concrete, a new pathway to store CO2 in concrete is proposed in this project through a biomolecule-regulated pre-carbonation method (BioCarb) resulted from an NSF award to Wang (CMMI-1761672). This is done by a two-step mixing approach in which CO2 is first bubbled into a cement slurry. The carbonated slurry is then mixed with other ingredients in the second step to produce concrete.