University of Waterloo students recognized for seaweed-inspired fire retardant

Waterloo — A pair of University of Waterloo graduates are being recognized for their engineering feat to create a non-toxic fire retardant that uses the power of seaweed to fight back the flames.

On Wednesday, Anneke van Heuven and Elias Trouyet were announced as runners-up in the James Dyson Award – the same Dyson who lent his name to a popular line of vacuum products – which recognizes young engineers.

“Our goal is to introduce our product onto the market and sustain ourselves from this venture,” said Trouyet.

The pair say they’re already fielding interest in the unique product, which started out as a school project to create a non-toxic, human-safe and environmentally-friendly fire retardant to replace conventional retardants, which can contain far more hazardous materials.

The co-founders of AlgoBio say their solution uses a biopolymer made from seaweed to use its naturally fire-retardant properties.

“We incorporate it by adding nanoparticles into our formula,” said van Heuven, adding their experiments with the solution went well from the get-go. “It just wasn’t burning at all. It maybe charred a bit at the bottom, me and Elias were like, ‘Are we doing this right?’ We were just shocked.”

Some of the interest the pair say they’ve received includes equipment supply companies and the construction industry.

Those fighting fires are also in their grand plans.

“Fire departments and firefighter protection is a market that we could be targeting,” said Trouyet.

In order for the AlgoBio product to be used by firefighters the next time they need to rush out to a call, the fire retardant needs to be certified by a standard recognized by the Ontario Fire Code, like the Underwriters Laboratories of Canada (ULC) which is in an independent product safety testing, certification and inspection organization.

According to AlgoBio, their coating formulations surpass the industry standard flame retardancy level with a burn rate 10x better than required.