KLAW Industries, a start-up company founded by Clarkson University students focused on recycling glass into a product used in concrete manufacturing, has partnered with the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I) and New York State Department of Economic Development (NYSDED) to further research their product.
The company has received support for a funded graduate student research position from NYSDED via the CAMP Graduate Research Fellowship.
With support from NYSP2I, KLAW Industries will be working with Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Sulapha Peethamparan and Assistant Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Robert Thomas to better understand how using their product, Pantheon™, affects the properties and performance of concrete, erasing barriers to adoption.
KLAW Industries is co-owned by Jack Lamuraglia ’21, an electrical engineering major, Tanner Wallis ’21, a mechanical engineering major and Jacob Kumpon, a junior at Binghamton University. To date, the start-up has earned tens of thousands of dollars in funding from national and international business competitions.
“The success we have been seeing so far is really an indicator to us that we are on the right track,” Lamuraglia said. “The interest and support we have seen from our concrete and recycling customers as well as from government programs and universities has shown us that we are solving the right problems. We plan to continue working to solve these problems with the goal of saving our customers money and improving the recycling market.”
According to Thomas, the concrete industry contributes between five and seven percent of global carbon emissions, which mostly comes from manufacturing portland cement. KLAW Industries’ product is a recycled glass powder that can be used to replace up to 40% of the portland cement in concrete.
“By replacing a fraction of the portland cement in concrete with KLAW's Pantheon, we can make significant progress toward decarbonizing concrete infrastructure,” Thomas said. “We hope to further show that Pantheon can actually be beneficial to the long-term performance of the concrete.”
“This research is the next step in developing a comprehensive database of how Pantheon (our product) acts in concrete in every perceivable way,” Lamuraglia explained. “Right now we have a lot of data on how Pantheon improves our customers' concrete while reducing their costs. What this research will do is provide the data we need to show regulators that concrete can be both clean and low cost, not just one or the other.”
Lamuraglia credits NYSP2I, Clarkson’s Shipley Center for Innovation and the Koffman Southern Tier Incubator in Binghamton for helping KLAW Industries succeed.
“This project would not be possible without the funding the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation provides each year through the Environmental Protection Fund to support the mission of NYSP2I,” he said. “Without this resource, this research would just be a daydream. Also big thanks to the Shipley Center for Innovation and the Koffman Incubator for supporting us!”
