ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050027
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
THE DISCOVERY three years ago of a way to decrease pollution from rayon production leads to a patent for a different use.
Wolfgang Glasser, a chemist in the Department of Wood Sciences at Virginia Tech, had practically forgotten Tuesday that he was scheduled to receive a patent on a fiber-production technique for possibly making artificial skin.
It's not that patents are old hat, though he does now have 10 of them. It's just that compared with the discovery behind the patent three years ago and the receipt of a confirmation letter a few weeks ago, Tuesday's signing of the paperwork in Washington was a comparatively dry event.
"The patent itself is like a birthday, but you're not feeling like suddenly you're a year older," Glasser said.
The excitement actually happened on the day in 1993 when Gamini Samaranayake, then a student researcher under Glasser, brought him a graph. It showed that the team had found a better way to make rayon for a Dutch company that had paid the university more than $300,000 in research funds for just such a technique.
"The days that change my life are those when a student or associate walks into my office and holds the evidence for a real breakthrough, a real breakthrough in our understanding," Glasser said. The award of a patent often can come years later, as was the case with his co-invention of a technique called "Cellulose derivatives with a low degree of substitution."
Glasser, Samaranayake and James E. Sealey II, then a master's candidate, found a way to reduce the water and air pollution associated with converting high-grade wood pulp to rayon, while also ensuring that the resulting fabric felt softer, like cotton.
Glasser said Southeast Roanoke residents living before 1958 know about the air pollution problem with rayon making, because now-defunct rayon producer American Viscose threw off a rotten egg odor until it closed its plant there. Some 1,800 people were put out of work.
But the Tech team's recent discovery wouldn't have saved the troubled plant, because the new method is too expensive for use in making the fabric for clothing. The company funding the research, Akzo Nobel NV in the Netherlands, elected not to put it to commercial use, Glasser said.
But Glasser said the university could license the technology as a means of making artificial, temporary skin; better bandages; and improved membranes for kidney dialysis. When the new material is used to patch wounds or other openings, air and moisture will pass through it in the same fashion as through skin, and it will dissolve when new skins grows, he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 linesby CNB