BW chemistry majors take on real-world green research project

A collaboration with State Industrial Products that wrapped up this spring was deemed a "great success" for both the company and the BW students, who "got to see what life is like as an industry research and development chemist."

Most of us never think about how companies work to change the "recipes" for specialized cleaning solutions like industrial hand soaps or chemicals for wastewater treatment. 

But, a group of Baldwin Wallace University students were immersed in a multi-year collaborative green research project to change the composition of several products made by State Industrial Products in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. The goal: to improve the products' environmental profiles to meet new government standards.

"The students primarily worked on raw material replacements for us," says Dr. Jason Bella, a research chemist at State Industrial. "Due to new upcoming regulatory restrictions, we needed to find suitable raw material alternatives that fit the new requirements and were compatible in our formulas."

Learning formula design

The collaboration brought multiple BW students into State Industrial's research and development process over a two-year period as they mixed and tested new blends to create safe and effective new formulations.

"Students were given instructions stating what raw material was being replaced, why it was being replaced and what a possible suitable replacement was," Bella explains. "They were also given some blends that were complete reformulations rather than just a single raw material replacement."

"The order in which ingredients are added to a formula is important," he adds. "So, this gave the students some exposure to how an industry formulator thinks about their formula design."

Students also pursued quality control by testing for odor, appearance, pH, specific gravity and viscosity and tested product effectiveness.

Win-win collaboration

BW chemistry and biology alumna Dr. Rebecca Spooner Korwin '95 serves as executive vice president of science and innovation at State Industrial Products. It was her idea to design a collaboration that would give BW students real-world experience while supporting her company's timely reformulation under regulatory deadlines.

With BW chemistry professor Dr. Stephen Tytko acting as lead technical advisor, the project got underway in November of 2022 with three students from the chemistry department: Abbey Albrecht '25, Brendan Bentkowski '25 and Jamie Scheiman '25. Tyler Rutherford '25 joined and worked during the spring 2023 semester. Kayla Yeager '24 then filled Rutheford's spot starting in fall 2023.

The project concluded in April of this year. 

Bella says the collaboration offered students "the chance to see what life is like as an industry research and development chemist, get some insight on meeting regulatory requirements while formulating, and earn a stipend for their work."

Great success

According to Bella, the partnership was "a great success" for State Industrial and one they would be open to repeating in the future. "The students and faculty were wonderful to work with, and we couldn't have asked for a better experience."

While the multi-year reformulation collaboration ended in April, Korwin reports offering rising sophomore Andrew Siefker '27 a spot at the company this summer, keeping the real-world connection going strong.