Turning Aging Roofs Into Opportunity

What a great story, right? A professor and then you guys were students and you developed this innovative solution in APEX 1132.

So tell everyone listening out there exactly what APEX 1132 is and what it does.

Uh, sure.

Um, so let's...

I can go actually a bit about when I was at Iowa State.

So the funny thing about APEX 1132 was actually discovered by accident.

Um, and so I was supposed to do one thing as an undergrad my senior year and did another thing, so I, we... 'Cause you know, uh, Eric had mentioned how before we did this roofing product we actually did like 15 years of asphalt research.

And so we really started off in the asphalt roads and, um, I, we ended up discovering this product by accident.

So APEX 1132's basic ingredient is CSO or cell epoxidized soybean oil, and we were originally using, uh, you know, traditional soybean oil, maybe some methyl esters and, uh, that's what I was supposed to use actually.

And by accident I actually put this, uh, off the shelf thing that we, they, they had.

It was always a really pa- big pain to use for other things that I wanted to do, uh, some things that were plastics that we're doing also research besides asphalt.

And it turned out it was great for asphalt, like just like wow, who, who would've ever thought that this product could actually be utilized for asphalt? And, um, but and then we, you know, once we figured out, okay, this is, this is what actually we did, then we really sat down and, you know, what was actually, uh, what's, what in the molecule is actually important? And what we found is, um, CSO is basically like a Goldilocks zone in terms of that reactive functionality.

So you know, traditional soybean oils has none and then fully epoxidized soybean oil has, has a lot.

And one of the big issues with fully epoxidized soybean oil is it, it's too polar.

So rather than soaking the asphalt, it really just kind of sits on top.

And traditional soybean oil, it soaks in the asphalt, but one of the big issues is it doesn't have the reactive functionality to be able to actually bind with the asphalt and really make it, you know, re- uh, rejuvenate the product and really actually give you that maintenance treatment.

And so interestingly enough that's, that's where the happy medium, uh, Goldilocks zone is and that's really how APEX 1132, uh, came to fruition was just this big accident.

A big happy accident.

Yes, exactly.

Wow.

I love it.