Inovamat - Inovação em Materiais
São Carlos company develops process that gives plaster concrete
resistance and can be used in buildings up to ten stories high

Lívia Komar

To move away entirely from the conventional civil construction process used in Brazil since the 19th Century, which uses cement, mortar, wood beams, bricks and ceramic tile: such is the challenge that a small company that is part of the Programa Inovação Tecnológica em Pequenas Empresas (Innovation in Small Businesses Program, PIPE), of the State of São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, Fapesp), decided to face. A newcomer in the market, Inovamat Inovações em Materiais – Inovamat Innovation in Materials –, headquartered in São Carlos, in the interior of the State of São Paulo, is a spin-off of the Institute of Physics (Instituto de Física) of the University of São Paulo (Universidade de São Paulo, USP) and was created to commercialize an innovative product, Novogesso (in a free translation, newplaster). Innovative in Brazil and in the world: the company deposited in 2005 a patent request for it in Brazil’s National Institute of Intellectual Property (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial INPI). One year later, it requested a patent abroad through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Milton Ferreira de Souza, 75, is the company’s president. For this USP PhD professor, creating companies is nothing new: he was among the creators of three others, including a former PIPE’s: Opto, today a global optics company. Souza’s enthusiasm with the new material stems from the six years he researched it and has been extended to three young professionals who have directed Inovamat from the start, in 2004. All of them are less than 30 years old: Hebert Luís Rosseto, a civil engineer and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from USP; Wellington Kanno, a civil engineer and a PhD candidate in the same area; and Milton Pinatti Ferreira de Souza, who is Souza, Sr.’s son and a lawyer. “I consider myself an entrepreneur. My role is to stay here long enough so that they’re able to fly on their own,” jokes the instructor, who, in his 49 years teaching at USP, has grown used to dealing with the contrast between generations.

The plaster house

A large two-story warehouse in a São Carlos residential neighborhood is the company’s headquarters. In the building are plaster mixers, compressors, ovens and pressers; among them work three employees. Close by, a seven-room house is the physical proof that Novogesso exists and works: from its structure to the roof it was built using the prefabricated system of plaster plates and bricks. “PIPE was crucial for the construction of the house,” says Rosseto. The funds for the project’s Phase II – approximately US$ 200,000 – were received in 2006 and were also used to purchase the equipment that manufactures the plaster pieces. In Phase I, the investment on research totaled about US$ 37,000.

Instead of mortar, the company used a special glue to set up the house. According to Rosseto, this makes possible to use less cement and finishing materials. But there’s also another important benefit: “It’s recyclable,” he says while knocking on the walls to proudly show how solid the building is. The house’s walls are light, easily mounted, and have thermic and acoustic insulation; the engineer also points out that with Novogesso the stakes can be shallow and that there’s an internal ventilation system. Because the house is a demo, it displays several finishing materials, such as polypropylene plates, paint over texture, PVC film and wallpaper. Rosseto claims that there can be used tiles as well.

“Building this house is something very important to society. It is a demonstration that it is possible to industrialize housing. Our intention has always been to contribute for the improvement of civil engineering’s technological level,” emphasizes Souza, Sr.

Novogesso

Plaster plates are nothing new in civil construction. In the dry wall system, which has been common for more than 100 years in the United States, they are fixed on metal structures. Very practical, this process is being used in Brazil since the early 1990s in houses and buildings. The material, however, may be used only in internal walls because it is not sturdy enough.

What’s new about Novogesso is what is called the UCOS method (from umidificação, compactação and secagem, or humidification, compaction and drying), which Inovamat has developed. The plaster prepared through this process may be put both inside and outside the house, and it’s sturdy enough to be used in the construction of buildings up to eight stories high. According to Souza, Sr., with the method Novogesso becomes “sturdier” than concrete, refuting the association between plaster and frailty – and the idea that plaster is to be used only in partition walls, ceilings, coves and light fixtures.
“Plaster is a crystal aggregate. With the method Inovamat has developed, these crystals increase in size and act like fibers, giving the material an extremely high resistance. Compare it with cement, whose resistance is zero,” says Souza, Sr. while showing a prototype of a brick. The UCOS method eliminates water molecules from the plaster, whose porosity is much reduced, which ensures its high resistance. This unique process is the basis for Novogesso.

Another advantage of Novogesso compared to the conventional process is its swiftness. Building a 7-room house such as the demo house takes only one month. And, according to Rosseto, the cost is 30% lower. “The square meter of a conventional construction costs around US$ 34. With Inovamat’s process it’s about US$ 23,” he assures.
The cost could be even more reduced with efficient logistics for the transport of the mineral plaster that comes to the State of São Paulo from the interior of Pernambuco. The city of Araripina, which has one of the planet’s largest deposits of gypsum, the mineral from which plaster is extracted, supplies 95% of Brazil’s demand. The States of Ceará and Tocantins are gypsum producers as well. In 2006, Brazil produced 1.7 million tons of plaster.

Plaster and phosphoplaster

Plaster is Inovamat’s main raw material. The company, however, has found in phosphoplaster, a substance that derives from a rock that has been subjected to a chemical reaction, an important ally in its research.
Brazil’s annual production of phosphoplaster, which can derive, for instance, from the production of ammonium phosphate for agriculture or bicalcic phosphate for animal feed, reaches 5.4 million tons, and may be converted into Novogesso, thus becoming useful in the civil construction market.

Cement and Novogesso

Cement has been used for centuries in civil construction to lay down bricks. But the manufacture of cement generates carbonic gas in excess, and is one of the main causes of global heating. Souza, Sr. explains: “Each ton of cement generates another ton of CO2. This amount is second only to the amount generated by all the automobiles in the world. Thus we have to find ways for either improving cement or not needing to use it.”
Plaster, on the other hand, is abundant in many regions of the Earth, and, thanks to its very nature, may be converted into ecological, recyclable, non-polluting materials. In addition, it’s non-combustible and has extremely high productivity.
Inovamat wants to develop a complete building technique, in which even the roof’s wood beams are replaced by its product. “That’s going to prevent deforestation,” imagines the company’s president.

After PIPE: patents and PITE

Souza, Sr. believes his invention will help solve problems such as Brazil’s housing deficit, thanks to the swiftness in which the houses can be built and the low cost in all building stages. “Labor is a problem for the civil construction industry. Construction companies want something that works like a Lego. That’s what we’re going to do. We have large potential customers and contacts with big construction companies all over the country,” he says.

Today the company survives by offering consulting services and research in engineering of materials such as silica, cellulose, fertilizers, cement, plaster and phosphoplaster, its credibility reinforced by the patents it has already deposited both in Brazil and abroad thanks to Novogesso. According to its owners, the only reason Inovamat hasn’t become an important player in the civil engineering market with Novogesso yet is because it still doesn’t have equipment capable of producing the pieces in large scale. “We can’t sell just five or ten bricks for a building. We must sell thousands of them,” points out Rosseto. “We’ve got the technology, but not the resources,” he says.

Funding for PIPE’s Phase II ended in December. In order to move on, the company has decided to apply for another Fapesp loan, this time through the Programa de Parceria para Inovações Tecnológicas (Partnership for Technological Innovation Program, PITE). Inovamat’s idea is to get the necessary funds for the equipment for large scale production, which it is also developing. These machines will manufacture the plates that will be used in walls, floors and ceilings, as well as the Novogesso bricks. Fapesp is already examining the request.

In spite of the product’s scientific success, the company wants to conquer the market and make a profit with its innovation. “Inovamat wants to sell the Novogesso technology to whoever wants it. But in order to do that we’ll need Fapesp’s support, or else we may die,” says Souza, Sr.