WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Four Purdue University students have created what they call a soy-based replacement for polystyrene, and a product the students believe could eventually lead to a market for Indiana and U.S. soybeans.

The product – StyroSoy – won first place at the Student Soybean Innovation Competition earlier this year at Purdue. The competition is a partnership of Purdue and the Indiana Soybean Alliance. The contest encourages Purdue students to use their knowledge and skills to create new industrial products from soybeans, according to the university.

StyroSoy is non-toxic, compostable, biodegradable and good for the earth, the students point out. The product also won the People’s Choice award, voted on by attendees before the awards ceremony.

Members of the winning team are Louis Edwards Caceres-Martinez, of Bogota, Colombia, a Ph.D. student at the School of Engineering Technology; Alyssa Choi, of Addison, Ill., a sophomore studying biological engineering; Valeria Tellez Gallego, of Bogota, a Ph.D. student studying industrial and physical pharmacy; and Amy Tang, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, a sophomore studying biological engineering and pharmaceutical sciences.

If StyroSoy can find a market, it could replace thousands of tons of polystyrene (also known as Styrofoam) for use each year in the U.S. for packaging and construction purposes, Caceres-Martinez said. It could represent up to $1.2 billion per year for the soybean industry, he added.

“The benefit is direct to soybean farmers,” he said. “To replace only 1 percent of the polystyrene market, you will need around 2,500 tons per year of soy protein.”

Protein is one of the major components of soybeans, he said. Additional soybean components were used in the creation of StyroSoy.

“It’s really exciting to see how these different elements from soybeans combine together in order to create our product,” Caceres-Martinez said. “But the numbers are huge. That means a lot of soybeans in the market and also a lot of money for both the Indiana Soybean Alliance and also for the soybean farmer.”

Adding another market for U.S. soybeans isn’t the only benefit of StyroSoy, Gallego said. “This is a great opportunity for the Indiana soybean industry to really be the pioneer on that transformation (away from polystyrene). Our product represents that opportunity to really change things, not only for the Midwest, but for everyone.”

The StyroSoy team formed last fall. All teams in the competition were given soy sample kits that included whole soybeans and soy products produced in processing facilities in Indiana and the Midwest.

The products the teams came up with had to be novel, have no patents filed, and be commercially viable. Twelve teams participated in the competition. As the winners, the StyroSoy team received $20,000.

The idea of creating a Styrofoam alternative came from what Caceres-Martinez called a very simple situation.

“I was in charge of moving a bunch of different (laboratory) instruments from one building to another building at Purdue University. For doing so, I was looking for alternatives to protect these very expensive items that we have in the lab. I realized at that point Styrofoam was the only alternative in the market. However, we know this material is very complicated from an environmental and health perspective.”

Once the team had an idea of what it wanted to create, the work in the lab began in earnest, Gallego said.

“You start with the raw materials, you get into the lab without knowing how you’re going to do it. You start experimenting, literally combining things together. In our case, we knew we needed to form a structure so the foam would hold together. We started with trying different types of soy proteins and mixing it with water. By different chemical processes, we created a film. This film had good elasticity and we had the structure.”

Eventually, through trial and error, the team was able to get its product to maintain a rigid form.

“Our product is both water resistant and it can withstand high temperatures so it can very much be used to protect different things,” Choi said. “Our aim is electronics, because right now, the electronic market doesn’t have a replacement. They only use Styrofoam. So that’s what we’re aiming first to overcome. Then we want to be able to have people be able to protect anything.”

The production cost of StyroSoy is less expensive than bubble wrap and polyurethane, team members said. The cost is comparable or even lower than other alternatives on the market, they said.

The competition may be over, but the push to commercialize StyroSoy and get it on the market isn’t, Gallego said. “It’s really rewarding but it’s also challenging in the sense that we want to do something else with the product. So we are in that process of, like, ‘hey we won, so what’s next?’ I think we are ready for the next challenge.”

It wasn’t always easy for the team to fit regular classwork and the competition into their schedules, Tang said.

“Having a set schedule to go to the lab, I was able to organize myself to do all my classwork before those times,” she explained. ‘I knew I could not do classwork during those times. Our team was always very understanding. If I needed to go to office hours because I didn’t understand something, everyone would be very understanding. After winning, it still sounds like a dream. It was a lot of work but I would say it was totally worth it.”