News

Products Developed by Alumnus’ R&D Company Improve Quality of Environment

For Alex Walsh ‘88, every day is the Science Fair. Owner and president of ePaint, Alex is involved in the research, development and marketing of environmentally friendly boat paints and other marine coverings that inhibit the growth of bio-fouling organisms.  Twenty years ago, Alex founded ePaint Company to develop paints that are safer to apply and better for our environment.

Most antifouling paints use forms of copper as the active ingredient leached at a rate of 35-50µg/cm2/day. 
Spring is bottom paint season.  For hundreds of years, mariners have coated the bottoms of their boats with antifouling paints.  Antifouling paints are regulated as pesticides by the USEPA.  Every year, we sand the bottoms of our boats and apply a couple of coats of antifouling paint.  We breathe the sanding dust and paint fumes, and poison our most treasured resources when we splash our boats.

Hundreds of years of leaching copper from hundreds of boats per harbor adds up to a whole lot of copper persisting in our most fragile estuarine environments. 

Alex tired of the taste of copper and the smell of aromatic hydrocarbons.  He questioned how harbors full of boats leaching pesticides could be sustainable.  Alex turned his love for boating and concern for our environment into a career. 

At Clark University, Alex worked to develop a copper-free non-toxic solution to controlling biofouling.  He identified catalysts modeled after natural products that use sunlight to create low levels of peroxides on the surface of his coatings when immersed in water. The hypothesis was that this product would result in an inhospitable surface to settling larvae of fouling organisms while providing an acceptable hull coating.

In 1996, Alex was presented with his first commercial opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of his approach.  The U.S. Coast Guard required an effective solution to keep the bottoms of the 47’ Motorized Lifeboats clean.  Traditional copper-based paints could not be used on the aluminum hulled boat, and the specified silicone paint was not performing as advertised.  Alex sent his best offering to Florida and competed against 30 other paint companies for the contract.  Today, the hulls of every 47’ MLB 41’ UTB and 35’ RB-M in the country are coated with Alex’s product.

Alex now holds two patents and five trademarks for products that prevent bio-fouling. ePaint Company has developed coatings for the US Air Force, US Navy, US EPA, NOAA, WHOI and USGS as well.

Alex is constantly researching opportunities via the Small Business Innovative Research Program (SBIR). “Every government agency has funding available for small business research,” said Alex.  The Department of Defense, for example, solicits requests for research proposals on hundreds of topics every quarter.“

Alex’s research has taken him to installations all around the country. In the Great Lakes, for example, navigation buoys were sinking at an alarming rate due to colonization of quagga and zebra mussels.  The quagga mussel was also hindering operation of the Hoover Dam and cooling water intake pipes at power plants.  ePaint developed polymers with zero toxicity that prevent the mussels from adhering.

Taking the same principles, Alex’s company developed special coatings for the aquaculture industry under a grant from NOAA.  Netting typically attracts sea squirts that block the net, thus reducing oxygen and nutrients and making it very hard to get rid of waste. “A fouled net,” said Alex, “can be like a sail underwater and you can’t obviously use a toxic bottom paint to protect the net.”

Alex’s products have been accepted by the US Air Force, the Department of Energy, NASA and the Department of Defense. “Concerned about the run off of deicing products (glycols) needed to allow aircraft to operate in winter months, the Air Force asked us why there couldn’t be a coating to prevent ice. We worked with the Army Corps of Engineers in New Hampshire and the International Icing Institute in Quebec to develop a viable solution to the icing problem.”

He said ePaint reached Phase 3 for its Air Force deicing product and had contracts with Boeing and PPG, the second largest paint manufacturer in the United States. “We were even contacted by 3M.  But typically you have to chase the business.  You must maintain your contacts and keep them fresh in order to make the sale. You have to anticipate the needs of your customer.”

Alex believes in the cradle to grave ideology when designing chemical solutions to solving problems. “I try to take an active role in environmental causes because everything ends up somewhere.  Most of us do not consider what happens to drugs, cleaning products, and pesticides after use. Byproducts of these compounds too often persist in the environment and affect non-target species.  I can help a variety of businesses comply with environmental law because we offer effective products that do not persist in the environment. All I ask of my customers is to give me a chance.”

In fact, Alex would like to offer the Falmouth Academy community a discount off of two of his products, ECOMINDER and EP2000, both bottom coatings. Order online (http://www.epaint.com) and use coupon code FA2011 to receive 20% off your order. Alex also offered to donate 20% of these online sales to Falmouth Academy to celebrate his 20 years in business.