Organic chemistry and polymers’ science are the two pillars that support the core AEP’s activities:

• Development of new polymers and their validation against commercial benchmarks
• Usability assessment of bio-based products and side streams from customers

AEP takes care of the design, synthesis, characterization and optimisation of new polymers and chemical building blocks, as well as their first laboratory upscaling to the kilogram scale, to enable testing in formulations that are representative of industrial applications, and sampling to clients or partners.

AEP has a sound expertise in the synthesis of polyethers, polyesters, polycarbonates, epoxies and acrylates, whose molecular structure and resulting properties are tailored to the requirements of the specific application. AEP can deal with the intrinsic variability of bio-based sources, ensuring reproducible properties of the new products within a narrow specifications’ range.

AEP also assists customers in understanding whether their bio-based products or side streams (including new molecules, novel grades of lignin, fractions from biorefinery operations, etc.) have the potential to enter the market. Those products are included in model industrial formulations to evaluate the key properties that can deliver and benchmarked against commercial ingredients to quantify the potential of replacement.

Both technical and economic viability are considered when developing new products and formulations.