BUILDING A WORLD WITHOUT PLASTICS
Plastic. It’s everywhere and it’s destroying our Earth, hurting everything we love and enjoy: people, animals, and entire ecosystems.
Today, there are a total of 5.25 trillion macro & micro pieces of plastics in our ocean with 46,000 pieces covering every square mile of ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tons.
With its toxic characteristics and its poor inability to degrade safely, plastic is the biggest global problem we are facing today.
THE PLASTIC PROBLEM
EVERY
MINUTE
1 GARBAGE TRUCK OF PLASTIC IS DUMPED INTO THE OCEAN.
Technology
A Better Alternative to Plastic
SealXX is creating a mussel sealant-based material that serves as an alternative to single-use plastics. This new material utilizes the covalent bonding of two different macromolecules to produce a protein-based gel-like substance that can be hardened into a flexible and durable material.
About
Our vision with SealXX is to build a world without plastics.
We are creating a clear, sustainable way to make the products we love and use in our everyday lives for years to come by mimicking protein-based natural processes; ultimately, we’re avoiding the environmental and health consequences by reducing the need for plastic reliance for the better of our planet.
The Chemical Process
First, we take two soluble macromolecules alginate (A) and gelatin (G). Alginate is negatively charged (-) while Gelatin is positively charged (+).
Both the macromolecules, alginate, and gelatin are dissolved into a chemical base solution substance or in our case — water (W). When the macromolecules dissolve in water, a chemical reaction result between the alginate and gelatin which forms a non-soluble entity called an “alginate-gelatin hydrogel droplet.”
Once the water solution evaporates, the two macromolecules (A and G) in their hydrogel droplet form find each other to covalently bond and form our final and new non-soluble hydrogel substance.
Just like when a water balloon pops after exceeding its carrying capacity, these hydrogel droplets go through a process called phase separation where the droplets build up around each other like a balloon. Once enough alginate and gelatin combine, the droplet burst and evenly disperse the remaining hydrogel to the bottom of the water.