The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is funding Kebotix to develop safe diarylide pigment alternatives using the company’s platform that accelerates discovery of new chemicals through artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics.
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Announcement by the Cambridge, Mass.-based technology company follows the EPA’s news of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program funding being allocated across 30 American companies to develop solutions for global environmental and public health problems through innovative environmental technologies. Kebotix’s program, within the “Safer Chemicals” category, is for use of a machine-learning platform to develop diarylide pigment alternatives that do not produce polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxic byproducts.
Diarylide pigments are organic compounds ubiquitous to such applications as commercial and home printing; Yellow 12, a diarylide pigment, is one of the three main colored pigments used in the four-color process of color printing, for example. These pigments usually provide bright colors and good stability at low cost, which reportedly leads to the global production of diarylide yellows at scales of more than 50,000 tons per year.
“This is a momentum builder for Kebotix’s existing work in the space of environmentally friendly and non-toxic pigments,” said Dr. Semion Saikin, Kebotix chief science officer. “The EPA funding enables us to accelerate engagement with companies expressing interest in testing and buying new halogen- and heavy metal-free pigments that our technology discovers and develops.”
The effort to spawn safer pigments harnesses Kebotix’s existing AI-powered platform that involves deep-learning algorithms for the prediction of molecular properties, synthetic routes and high-throughput computational modeling of molecules in addition to automated synthesis and characterization controlled by proprietary machine learning methods.
“While our platform is advancing next-generation of specialty chemicals that are sustainable, environmentally friendly and economical, the closed-loop approach to the design and discovery of pigments is uniquely efficient,” Saikin said.”