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Company Profile Based in Chorley, Lancashire, Kerax manufacture formulated wax products from vegetable and petrochemical raw materials. Their product portfolio is extensive and the industries they supply range from additives for all-weather horse racetracks to industrial applications, such as investment casting, as well as pharmaceutical raw materials. Innovation and bespoke products are key to Kerax’s business model. The Project There exists an industry demand for emulsions of hydrogenated vegetable waxes as sustainable alternatives to petrochemical equivalents, but no currently existing surfactants have proven effective in creating a stable formulation. This project will attempt to apply principles of Green Chemistry to design and synthesise novel surfactant molecules that will make the hydrogenated vegetable waxes viable as products. Additionally, the project will also develop a surfactant capable of emulsifying paraffin wax for transport. Emulsified paraffin wax is a liquid at room temperature, so can be moved between containers without the need for energy and CO2 emission intensive steam heating. Matthew Callaway Matt graduated from the University of Bath with a 2:1 in Chemistry for Drug Discovery and gained industry experience at MedPharm Ltd in Pharmaceutical Formulation Development and Analysis. For his dissertation, he used deep eutectic solvents made from renewable feedstocks to make drug delivering nanoparticle formulations. Academic Supervisors Prof Joe Sweeney Dr Julien Doulcet Kerax Ltd