Using Waste Of The Fishing Industry For Nanotechnology
At the CleanEquity Monaco 2018 Conference, various companies in the sustainability realm presented a brief about their work. On 9th March 2018, the Founder and General Manager of BOCO Technology, Aaron Guan presented his company to the stalwarts of the sustainability sector.
“BOCO Technology was founded in 2013 in Canada. It has state of the art research facility, with a scalable and environmentally sustainable process. You don’t need me to tell you that Plastics are important. But this industry is at crossroads. It is strong but polluting, and when it’s clean it is weak. The solution is shrimp," said Guan. He also added, “The chitin nanowhisker is a nanoscale single crystal, and it is bio-based, biocompatible, renewable and sustainable. It has applications in polymers, biocomposites, 3D printing, Micro, nano-cellular foams, implantable devices, biodegradable materials, adhesives and coatings and a lot more. We offer multiple grades of CNW tailored specifically to target applications.”
Speaking about the applications of the chitin nanowhisker, Guan added, “I would like to specifically talk about film applications. Polymeric films are widely used in packaging barrier and protective applications. Regardless of the application, barrier properties are one of the most vital characteristics of a plastic film. CNW is a perfect single crystal at the atomic level. It has an impenetrable crystal structure with over 300 m^2 of surface area.”
“The plastic film market ships over 100 million tons of material per year, and is still growing annually. There are epoxy applications which are a fantastic material, but its brittleness is problematic. Epoxy is very similar to glass, and it shatters easily. The current solution for epoxy brittleness problem is using liquid rubber additives, which has a reduced performance and potentially toxic. Chitin nanowhisker can increase the toughness of epoxy”, said Guan.
About the epoxy applications of chitin nanowhisker, Guan also added, “Chitin nanowhisker is a hard particle in the nanoscale. The epoxy market is huge. The demand for epoxy in US alone is over 400,000 tons, the global demand is well beyond a million tons. We have the support of government and universities. Competitors of chitin nanowhiskers fall in to 2 categories, which is chemical additives, and traditional nanomaterial, which is carbon nanotube, grapheme, and nanometals. CNW nanocrystal is biodegradable as well.”
“We collaborate with leading companies in the industry, convert them into paying customer, and then use their influences in the industry to attract new customers. The BOCO team is very strong to attract investors. We have a good 4-year plan, in 2018, we plan to increase capacity to 30 tons, begin market penetration and start the IPO process. By 2021, we plan to hit 100 million USD in revenue and maintain 60% profit margins. We have raised 3.8 million USD to date, with a $27 million current valuation. 25% of our fund will be for new application development," said Guan, adding that, “We plan to leverage our position as a public company to raise $50-100 million dollars. We can leverage green technologies like CNW to make our future greener and better, using the waste resource from the fishing industry.”
