Trissa Joseph, Vice President - R&D, Everest Industries Limited

Dr. Trissa Joseph, Ph.D., is an experienced R&D leader with a strong background in innovation, product development, and technology-driven growth in the building materials and construction sector. She focuses on developing sustainable, high-performance materials and building robust innovation pipelines aligned with business strategy. With deep technical expertise and strong academic grounding, she combines scientific insight with execution excellence to deliver scalable solutions, strengthen product portfolios, and drive market competitiveness. She is also known for leading agile, collaborative R&D teams focused on customer-centric and sustainable innovation.

In a recent email interaction with Priyanka R, Copywriter at siliconindia, Trissa Joseph, Vice President - R&D, Everest Industries Limited, shared her insights on ‘Advancing Circular Chemistry for Scalable and Sustainable Industrial Materials’.

Circular chemistry is transforming formulation-led industries like construction chemicals by enabling more sustainable, resource-efficient material design without compromising performance, cost, or compliance. Enabled by advances in molecular design, alternative raw materials, and process optimization, it supports reduced-carbon formulations, improved material efficiency, and circular lifecycle practices such as reuse and recycling. As industries scale these innovations from lab to commercial production, circular chemistry is emerging as a key driver of resilient, efficient, and sustainable industrial material systems.

Embedding Circular Chemistry in Construction Formulations

Circular chemistry construction industries are no longer a trend, but a necessity. The principles can be embedded in formulation-led industries with the help of proper molecular design principles. Companies are investing in circular chemistry to reduce environmental impact, improve cost efficiency, and advance a circular economy.

Here are a few ways you can address it.

Design to Replace - The easiest way to achieve this is utilizing alternate raw materials that are obtained from renewable sources or industrial waste (like byproducts of another industry). A few examples are replacement of main binders like cement (having the biggest carbon footprint) with pozzolanic materials like flyash and granulated blast furnace slag).

Reinforcement like fibers can be replaced by cost-effective fibers like agriculture waste, or synthetic fibers. The effective way is to balance replacement of primary raw materials with alternatives without compromising quality and cost. In the construction industry, such measures are found to reduce costs. However, in this process, it is important to ensure the recycled material or byproduct of industries have consistent quality and are procured from sources closer to the factory. The first stepping stone for circular chemistry is to strengthen the market for secondary materials.

Designing for Reusability-The construction industry is investing heavily in research to effectively use its own end-of-life materials as viable alternatives. Legislation is catching up and the construction industry has made its moves. The construction industry reuses its demolition debris in new construction, turning end of life materials back into new projects. Demolished concrete is crushed, screened and graded, steel reinforcement is removed and material is used as aggregates. This is the basis for base layers, non-structured concrete and pavements and pre casts. Some recycled concrete can be treated and used in structural concrete under strict quality control so that it does not impact the quality of the product and does not contain material that are not compliant. 

Design to Reduce-Circular chemistry works commercially when we design formulations to reduce material usage. This is where innovation can make a real difference. It helps reduce the load on natural resources or use of higher carbon footprint materials along with reducing material consumption. This can be effectively done using high performance additives, optimizing particle packing and improving fiber or reinforcement efficiency. Over-engineering products for sustainability should be avoided, which can make the product so expensive that customers won’t buy.

Along with formulation, process optimization plays an important role in sustainability. This can be achieved by reducing losses, higher retention of solids, optimizing flocculant usage or dispersant usage-controlled use of trimming waste, reusing process water and running the plant in a closed loop to attain water circularity.  Along with the above, efficiency can be improved by controlling curing (temperature and humidity), recovering heat from autoclaves and dryers.

Also Read: Transforming Automotive Manufacturing with Smart ERP for Next-Gen Efficiency

Scaling Circular Chemistry from Pilot to Global Commercialization

Scaling circular chemistry requires transformation at all levels across the organization. Scaling need value creation. It goes beyond cost efficiency and compliance. It is a driver for circular economy. It has been observed that many circular chemistry initiatives can never make it beyond R&D pilot. All circular initiatives must be moved out of R&D pilots, and a dedicated business stream needs to own it with P&L accountability. Commercialization will need investment, scale and reliability. Formulation based circularity will need a strong sustainability owner or a project manager who will be responsible for scale.

Any non-traditional raw material use will also need a strong supply chain to ensure consistent supply of quality waste stream. This is one of the main reasons scale up efforts fail.

It will need a strong material qualification infrastructure that can give quick performance testing, toxicity studies and durability of finished goods, feedback from market on performance.

Sometime manufacturing and equipment’s  need to be modified like flexible dosing systems to handle variable raw materials, mixing systems, and inline sensors to monitor real time materials.

Depending on complexity, circular chemistry scale up may also need a different go-to-to-market strategy, pricing, cost, design, etc. A traditional RM/KG cost model will not be used as a yard stick. Instead, material saving and savings on waste disposal, energy/water should be taken into consideration.

Managing Raw Material Variability in Circular Formulations

Balancing raw material variability is the biggest challenge in scaling circular chemistry in the construction industry. The entire supply chain and process control should be engineered to absorb or control variability. It will start with deriving a specification range for the particular raw material along with understanding of chemistry of the waste material. Sometimes different batches of raw material need to be mixed to get consistent product. In construction industry, flyash is the biggest variable.  Mixing and forming a blend of multiple sources before use can help reduce batch to batch variation. This calls for investment and modification in process. Some sources may require grinding and screening before use.

Formulation should not be fixed, however, based on variability of the quality of raw material should be able to be tweaked for fineness, or moisture or ratio etc. Additional silos or tanks will be required for storing waste before or after treatment. All products cannot be recycled or re-used. Caution should be taken based on research before implementing.

Circular chemistry in construction is no longer a trend but a necessity. Its principles like resource efficiency, alternative raw materials, and design for reuse can be embedded in formulation-led industries through molecular design.

Working very closely with trusted suppliers to improve specs and consistency is topmost. There must be continuous feedback from the market on field performance and bases that refining of specs and ratios can be done.

The most important point whenever cement is used is the quality of the water. Any formulation can be subjected to failure if the water quality changes. This can be a challenge in industries where circulated water is used without processing.

Bridging the Lab-to-Plant Gap in Sustainable Formulation Scale-Up

Most circular chemistry efforts fail during commercialization not because the chemistry is wrong, but because lab and pilot conditions are controlled and closely monitored. People who developed the technology are directly involved, raw material is controlled and changes are made instantly. However, during commercialization, the scale is bigger, raw material varies and machines behave differently and operators follow SOP.

A few bottlenecks are

1. Gap in technology transfer
2. Variability in process and equipment
3. Equipment mismatch for the new raw material
4. Raw material variability
5. Incomplete SOP 
6. Skill gap
7. Lack of ownership

This can be overcome through:

• Effective knowledge transfer
• Involving process teams in technology transfer
• Developing detailed SOPs based on process team observations and inputs, especially on what needs to be done when conditions change

Designing a Circular Product Lifecycle for Industrial Materials

For taking the product life cycle from raw material sourcing to end of life recovery will need a basis defining sustainability around value creation. If products are recycled and reused then less waste will end up in landfill. There must be a mind shift from sales pitch to ways of working. There must be collaboration between manufacturers, architects, consumers and other companies to reuse and recycle the product past its life. It is the partnership that will transform the cycle.

Selection of raw materials should be such that it will help save the environment. Localize the procurement process to reduce carbon emissions due to logistics. Reduce the use of material by using efficient material and use alternate materials that are byproducts of industry.

It starts with designing the product that can be dismantled easily, repaired if required and reused for the same application. Demolition sites to become resource banks.

In essence, investing in digitalization to create a footprint of a product so that it can be traced back to the producer or consumer. A system needs to be developed to return the product to manufacturers. It will require investment in high value recycling plants.