Meet the chemical engineer piloting Boeing’s materials innovation

More than 100,000 commercial flights crisscross the global skies every day on average, and that number is set to soar in coming years. To quash flying’s environmental footprint, the aviation industry has set ambitious sustainability goals that include net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Airplane manufacturers have also committed to cutting water and energy use, and the waste they create.

Jill Seebergh is keeping Boeing on course to meet those sustainability goals. As a principal senior technical fellow at Boeing’s research arm in Seattle, she leads the company’s adoption of new technologies that make aircraft energy-efficient, and reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing them.

In her nearly 30 years at Boeing, Seebergh has guided the development and use of novel coating materials that reduce weight and drag and improve durability. Her strategic agenda also includes eliminating the use of hazardous chemicals so that airplanes are safer to manufacture and fly in, and maximizing the recycling of materials from retired planes. Boeing has recently faced a string of safety issues.

Seebergh says that when she joined the company, she didn't “have an appreciation or understanding of what chemical engineers in the aerospace industry do.”

They do a lot, she quickly found out. Chemical engineering is integral to every stage of an aircraft’s life cycle, Seebergh says, “from the processes involved in building aircraft, such as cleaning and surface preparation, painting, coating, and using sealants and adhesives, to understanding corrosion and degradation of materials during service. It’s a perfect fit for chemical engineers.”

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Lehigh University in 1989, Seebergh went on to earn a master’s and PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Washington. Her master’s research focused on adhesion and interface science, but she switched to colloidal science for her PhD work, studying aggregation of polymer particles in aqueous dispersions.

That expertise aligned perfectly with her first job at 3M, where she formulated new dispersions for adhesives. A year later, a tour of a Boeing 737 assembly facility in Renton, WA left an impression, and she applied for a job. It was 1996.

“Back then, we weren’t using the term sustainability,” she says. But sustainability has always been the core of her mission at Boeing.

Her first project at Boeing was “to connect laboratory science to the very practical operation of painting a huge aircraft,” Seebergh says. She applied the basics of rheology—the way a fluid flows—to understand how paint spreads when applied to large surfaces. This led to better paint formulations and application processes that reduced defects.

In addition to paints and primers, airplanes are coated with materials that improve resistance to corrosion. These coatings, and the structural materials aircraft are made of, influence its environmental impact.

Soon after she started at Boeing, Seebergh turned her attention to increasing the durability of coatings. Airplanes are designed to last 20–30 years, and over that time their surfaces take a beating from harsh weather and chemicals such as hydraulic fluids. Durable coatings bring performance and sustainability benefits as well as savings, Seebergh says. “If a coating system lasts 10 or more years, our airline customers don’t have to repaint their aircraft every few years, which saves water and waste.”

Aircraft manufacturers have traditionally used single-coat paints that lose gloss and change color after about 3 years. So Seebergh and her colleagues partnered with Ford Motor and others to translate the automotive industry’s long-lasting dual coat system—consisting of a base coat and a top clear coat—to one suitable for aircraft. The polyurethane-based dual coat system is now standard across the industry, Seebergh says.

The stuff that goes into coatings matters, too, and Seebergh has been on a mission to replace toxic chemicals in Boeing’s airplane coatings. The prime example is hexavalent chromium, which the aviation industry has used for 90-plus years as a corrosion inhibitor. But Cr(VI) is a carcinogen, and Boeing’s R&D team is seeking alternatives.

On Seebergh’s watch, the company is switching to Cr(VI)-free primers and coatings that make metal alloy surfaces paintable. She is working with academic and industry partners to find benign corrosion inhibitors for paints and other surface treatment layers.

Seebergh says Boeing is testing several other materials technologies, including coatings that keep surfaces free of ice and contamination; shark skin–inspired films that reduce air friction; and lightweight sealants. “There’s a lot of sealant on aircraft—and making those less dense can take out hundreds of pounds,” she says.

Much of the materials R&D Seebergh oversees is intended for next-generation aircraft. Boeing is trying out some of the novel technologies on its ecoDemonstrator test airplanes. In addition to coatings, structural materials are a big focus. Older airplanes are made mainly of aluminum and its alloys. In contrast, up to half the fuselage of newer aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is made of carbon fiber-thermoset composites. This makes them lighter and more fuel-efficient.

Boeing engineers are now testing lighter metal alloys and a different class of composites known as thermoplastics, Seebergh says. “Thermoplastics don’t need the high heat and long cure cycles in an autoclave, so the manufacturing process uses less energy than thermosets.”

Sustainability can be a double-edged sword, though. Over 90% of materials from older aircraft are recycled today, because it’s easier to recover aluminum alloys, Seebergh says. Lightweight composites make newer aircraft more fuel-efficient, but they’re harder to recycle. The wind industry faces the same quandary with its composite turbine blades. “Those newer airplanes aren't getting retired, so we haven't seen the wave of composite waste yet, but there’s a lot of research focused on recycling composite materials,” she says.

Meanwhile, Boeing is using carbon fiber waste recovered from its factory floors to make interior wall panels and sending the waste to industry partners to make laptop covers and car parts.

A large part of Boeing’s sustainability goals are tied to carbon emissions. It’s challenging to decarbonize aviation, Seebergh says. Sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) will reduce lifecycle carbon emissions by up to 80% compared with conventional jet fuel. But while airlines are fervently trying to make the switch to SAFs, progress has been slow.

This challenge is why advanced materials that make airplanes lighter and more aerodynamic matter, too. “When you think about the materials that an airplane is made from, each new generation that comes off the drawing board is 20–30% more efficient,” Seebergh says. “Sustainable aviation requires a lifecycle approach, so you have to think about the materials that the airplane is made out of, as well as how you power it.”