The innovation in a nutshell
Harvesting the sun’s energy to make fashion fabrics.
More in detail
The process of making traditional nylon is energy and water intensive, it emit greenhouse gases and pollutes the air. Chemical engineering professor Miguel Modestino and professor Sophia Haussener looked to the sky and came up with the idea of solar textiles – a production process for nylon that uses only water, plant waste and solar energy.
“Nylon is made via reactions that require electricity. That allows us to incorporate solar cells into the chemical production process,” explains Miguel. “Instead of using petroleum as the raw material, we can use biomass,” he continues, explaining that in this way the clothes will bind greenhouse gases from the plant waste instead of releasing it into the air.
“The Global Change Award has served as a platform to showcase our work within the broader fashion and materials industry. This has led to multiple connections that helped us better understand the nylon market, and has propelled our commercialization endeavours.”
Miguel A. Modestino
Team members: Miguel A. Modestino, Sophia Haussener, Daniela Blanco, Adlai Katzenberg and Saurab Tembhurne
Country: USA and Switzerland
Website: sunthetics.org
