Microbial Fermentation of Hyaluronic Acid; Transitioning Away from Animal Cruelty in the Cosmetic Industry: An Ethical Analysis 6 views

The cruelty-free movement in cosmetics greatly influenced my technical and STS thesis. Consumers are increasingly interested in brands and products that align with their morals and ethical standards. In the cosmetic industry, this translates to products that don’t use animals in testing or formulation. Due to an increase in scientific innovation and technical expertise, there are now countless alternatives to the usage of animals to make these products, making companies decide which route to take when managing their operations. The technical portion of my project is focused on hyaluronic acid production and the STS component is an ethical analysis of two companies and the factors that influenced their transition away from and stance on animal cruelty tactics. The technical portion of my thesis produced a full process design for a hyaluronic acid production facility. This was complete with the upstream process which included fermentation and inoculum preparation as well as downstream which were the purification steps to produce our final product. The goal of our project was to design a plant to produce 30 metric tons of dried cosmetic-grade hyaluronic acid per year. We also aimed to make our process more sustainable through our feedstock selection and waste management. My two key contributions were the design of the ethanol recovery system and the dryer. Ethanol was the most expensive raw material in our process, so I designed a distillation column and molecular sieve drying unit to purify ethanol and recycle it for the ethanol precipitation tanks in our process. A spray dryer was designed to remove water before our final product is produced. A key constraint for that unit operation was that hyaluronic acid must stay at a temperature below 60 degrees before it starts to degrade and become less effective. Softwares such as Aspen Plus and MatLab were crucial in the modeling of this system. In my STS research, I aimed to understand what influences a company’s transition away from animal cruelty in cosmetics. During my early research, I found that economic, ethical, and legal factors are the most important in influencing companies. I then completed two case studies on two different companies and analyzed them through the ethical frameworks of virtue ethics, utilitarianism, and kantian ethics. Through this research, I determined that although this is a very nuanced issue, there are patterns in which companies will mostly act with economic interests in mind. However, ethical and legal factors can sometimes create a strong pull for companies to change their ways. The two companies I analyzed, The Body Shop and L’Oreal, proved that depending on one’s ethical outlook, actions can always be perceived in different manners. From this thesis, I have learned the immense connection between STS and engineering. It is crucial that engineers hold paramount the safety, health, and wellbeing of the public when designing and innovating. By learning different concepts and ethical frameworks I am proud to be prepared to be an ethical engineer during my career and influence others to do the same. My project specifically showed how consumers can speak out and influence companies to act more sustainably. This was inspiring to me because there is such power in people advocating for what they believe in. I would like to thank Professor Eric Anderson and Professor William Davis for their help on my technical and STS thesis components. Their advice and feedback was invaluable for the continuation of this project.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

hyaluronic acid; cosmetic; animal cruelty

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering Technical Advisor: Eric Anderson STS Advisor: William Davis Technical Team Members: Nella Bayard, Jessie Lee, Rachel Margelos, Nicole Zapertova

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-05-08