Most phenolic resins1-4 are prepared by reacting formaldehyde with phenols, which are considered to be toxic and harmful for the environment. Now, with increasing concern for environmental protection and, due to stringent regulations to ensure the same, it has become a must for industry to find eco-friendly substitutes for all harmful materials like phenols and VOCs present in organic coating compositions. The technological developments are, therefore, focused on reducing VOCs from the coatings to meet industrial requirements. To this end, the use of cardanol, obtained from Cashew Nut Shell Liquid (CNSL), as an eco-friendly substitute for phenols is gaining importance due to the decline in supply and price fluctuation in phenolic raw materials...

For a long time, I've kept a well-measured distance from all programs involving space and the military. Probably because I am horrible at remembering acronyms. For me AOL is where I logon to get my e-mail, but at Goddard it stands for Airborne Oceanographic LIDAR, while to military brass it signals an Aircraft Operating Limitation...

Two trends are evident in architectural paints today. Waterborne, or latex, paints continue to grow in use, and today's homes are increasingly being painted with deep, vibrant colors, both inside and out. While experience has shown that the best overall balance of rheology in waterborne coatings is achieved by using non-ionic associative rheology modifiers, when such coatings are tinted with high levels of colorants they often exhibit a significant decrease in viscosity. This decreased viscosity can manifest itself in a number of ways, including low sag resistance, poor brush loading and a "thin" appearance in the can. Although a number of approaches to formulating around these issues exist, there continues to be a need for viscosity-stable rheology modifiers. A new development in HEUR thickening offers significant improvements in these performance parameters...

Meeting the demands of your customer is always challenging. Meeting the requirements of a premium car company such as BMW can be overwhelming. But apparently no challenge is too big for automotive components supplier Plastic Onmium and its team of industry experts...

For more than 50 years, alkyd resins supplied in white spirit have been widely used in the production of high quality decorative coatings. Recently there has been a move towards lower aromatic solvents and higher solids paints which provide the end user with potentially less harmful products and minimise the impact on the environment. With the increasingly restrictive legislation concerning VOC emissions, alkyd emulsions provide a means of maintaining the benefits of alkyd chemistry whilst replacing organic solvents with water...

Over the last decades new effect pigments have been constantly developed with increasingly complex color shift. New effect pigments not only change their appearance with different viewing angles but also with varying illumination conditions (e.g.: direct sunlight vs. cloudy sky). As much as uniform and consistent color is essential to achieve high quality finish, the appearance of effect coatings can no longer sufficiently be described with conventional instrumentation...

Recent advances in new amine functional curing agents have improved performance of waterborne two-package epoxy coating systems. These new amine adducts offer performance advancements along with the ability to meet low- and ultra-low VOC levels. This paper will summarize the performance of a new zero-VOC, water-soluble, amine curing agent in waterborne epoxy formulations with liquid epoxy resin at less than 50g/L VOC. We will review the performance of these new starting formulations against commercially available coatings for concrete...

The exterior durability of most organic coatings is highly dependent upon the use of light stabilizers. The two main stabilizer categories are ultraviolet light absorbers (UVAs) and hindered amine light stabilizers (HALS). UVA chemical classes include benzophenones, cyanoacrylates, oxanilides, benzotriazoles and triazines. Today, the latter two of these classes are by far the most commercially significant to the coatings industry due to their excellent spectral coverage, high extinction coefficients and excellent photo-permanence...

Graffito (graffiti, plural) is a word that is simple in meaning - any design, or scribbled motto, etc., drawn on a wall or other exposed surface. Yet its simple meaning belies the incredible expense and sheer nuisance associated with its practice in today's society. In fact, graffiti has been with us since the dawn of civilization; however, in today's world and global economy graffiti has often come to mean the defacing of public buildings, transportation vehicles, or any other entity that is highly visible to the general public.

Most scientists become familiar with reading and writing technical documents such as research papers and reports at an early stage in their careers. Not so with patents, where skill in reading tends to come later in a career and after direct experience of patenting product developments. Like research papers or reports, patents are also technical descriptions of products or processes, but have a unique grammar and vocabulary because their objectives for being written are not the same as a report...

The first American Coatings Show and Conference was held from June 2-5 at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina. According to event sponsors NPCA and Vincentz Network, this premier event was very successful. The event sponsors chose NürnbergMesse as their partner for organizing the American Coatings Show...

The need for antimicrobial products to protect water-based coatings against bacteria, yeast, fungus and algae is well established in the coatings industry. For exterior coatings, the market has responded with appropriate, cost-effective antimicrobials that dramatically expand the lifespan of the applied coating...

Dow Corning Corporation is a leader in developing new Silicon-Based Technologies (SBTs) that advance the coatings industry and empower formulators to offer new functionality in various applications. In the past 10 years, the number of new patents related to silicon-based materials for coatings has increased exponentially, specifically related to solving the problems traditionally addressed by SBTs, such as foam control, wetting and adhesion promotion...

A good matte finish is often required in coatings formulations. In order to fully optimize this important parameter, Michelman has recently developed two wax dispersions: Michem® Guard 349 and Michem Guard 350. Both dispersions aid in imparting a matting effect to most aqueous coatings and varnishes, while enhancing other properties such as abrasion resistance and water repellency...

Since the mid-1990s, composite materials have made substantial inroads across the building products industry in the manufacture of windows, doors, trim and siding. The unprecedented strength and resilience of these materials, and their low maintenance, has made them too good to ignore. They also offer another advantage important in today's building industry: "green" appeal. While they are produced using petrochemicals, composites may be comprised of recycled materials and, therefore, reduce the harvesting of lumber...

This article focuses on the chemistry of dirt pickup resistance (DPR) and outlines what steps - including research, product development and testing procedures - need to be taken to provide the proper solutions...

Polymertronics was set up in 2006 to develop technology to produce inkjet-printable, ultra-violet (UV) curable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) fluids. OLEDs that can be printed on standard UV-inkjet equipment have many advantages. They are much quicker and cheaper to produce than standard OLEDs, they can be designed and manufactured with very short lead times, they can be printed on to a range of exotic surfaces including flexible ones, they give a much sharper image than conventional OLEDs, and they have a huge range of uses in medicine, advertising, logistics, the security industry, smart packaging and other areas. UV-curable OLEDs can also be printed with UV-curable coloured inks...

A few years ago the coatings world was ‘nano' crazy. The term nano was everywhere. I didn't know what it really meant since there wasn't an agreed-upon definition of nano. Mostly it meant adding a little of something tiny to paint. It didn't matter if was a 5-micron particle. If it was small - it was nano. "Sustainability" has replaced nano as the hot topic. I don't really understand what "sustainability" means either...

The UV ink market overall fared well in 2007, according to suppliers to the market. "We see the various segments of the energy cured ink market continuing to grow at a rate slightly greater than GDP in the both the EU and U.S. and at a generally faster rate than competitive technologies," said Harald Boner, technical marketing, pigments and additives division, Clariant. "UV inks are generally perceived as an environmentally friendly technology, which may also help drive growth...

The EU's REACH regulation has a clear message: meet the requirements or you will not be able to produce in, export to, or market within the EU. Is your company able to meet this challenge? The new European Union chemicals regulation came into force in June 2007. The regulation is known as REACH, which stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals. The implications of REACH for chemical and down-stream industries and for associated individual companies are significant in terms of cost, managing ongoing customer and supplier relationships, and because of its far-reaching regulatory requirements...

Printing on plastic is a growing and challenging market for UV-curable inks and coatings. They have been successfully used for many years, but new opportunities arise daily that remind printers and formulators how difficult achieving adhesion can be...

Energy-curing inks are continuing to grow strongly in Europe, even though the graphics market as a whole is slowing down. The big challenge now facing the energy-curing sector is how to maintain the momentum. In Eastern Europe, sales of energy curing inks are going up at 5 to 10 percent, nearly double the level of conventional inks. Demand has been particularly high in Russia, according to industry sources...

The major trends in the global coatings industry revolve around environmental concerns and the reduction of VOC emissions, reducing energy costs, improving productivity and improving performance. These four factors are driving companies across all segments of the coatings industry to look for alternative coatings technology. As a result, radiation curable coatings represent the fastest growing coatings segment because they offer numerous advantages including rapid curing process, less scrap, small footprint, less work in process, a reduction in utility usage, reduction in VOCs and improved performance...

Can you think of any organization that has had 35 consecutive years of sales growth? A few come to mind that may fit that category, but you can count them on one hand. Statistics from past RadTech International shows indicate that the UV/EB formulated product growth for the North American market is just over 7% annually...

Petroleum sulfonates have evolved dramatically from their emergence as by-products of white mineral oil production to multifunctional products vital to modern industry and commerce. At the turn of the century, what we now call natural petroleum sulfonates, or their precursors (sulfonic acids) were being produced in fairly large quantities as "waste product" in the production of food grade white mineral oils. It wasn't long before the sulfonate molecule was recognized for its ability to function as a detergent and corrosion inhibitor...

Phenalkamine curing agents, derived from the cashew nutshell liquid, provide outstanding anti-corrosion properties to epoxy coatings. This technology allows the paint formulator to provide the marine paint industry with solvent-free and edge-retentive coatings...

Over the past few years, this series of technology reviews has dealt with many different aspects of coatings technology. Increasingly, it has become difficult to find subject areas of general interest which do not overlap extensively with something already discussed. To bring this series to a suitable close, I thought it would be interesting to look further ahead than usual; to consider factors and technologies which may change the face of the coatings industry in the longer term...

Every day within the United States new green initiatives are being proposed by politicians, celebrities and businesses. California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is supporting hybrid cars. Musician Sheryl Crow is supporting green bathroom accessories. The Home Depot recently rolled out its Eco Options program in stores throughout the country. The company also signed an agreement with The Conversion Fund to reduce CO2 emissions. With just about everyone and every sector of the business world supporting some green cause, what is the U.S. paint industry doing to protect the environment, reduce energy consumption and global warming? Not much at all, in this author's opinion...

Dispersing pigments for paints and dyes increases the surface area of the product's ingredients by dispersing the solids or reducing their particle size. Advanced reactor-based technology can be used to achieve this. The technology ensures the even distribution of energy throughout the product's ingredients to increase the surface area...

Several pigment combinations are suitable for the formulation of green color shades. For economic reasons, "complementary pigment combinations" are often used. These are green shades that are generated by mixing yellow and blue pigments. However, these mixtures may bear significant risk in terms of weather fastness, especially when the fastness properties and the pigment concentrations are not balanced, or when the formulation contains a large portion of titanium dioxide. In combination with the effect of sunlight and weathering, all of this can lead to undesirable and unacceptable color changes in the coating...

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. In these times of spiraling energy costs and increasing environmental concerns, that definition might be stretched to include using the same coating techniques and expecting superior results...

It is not often that one can report on change of the scale that is taking place in Asia Pacific at the moment. Once in a lifetime events are shaping the global coatings industry as never before and it is not an easy task to try to do justice to the enormity of what is happening...

Colloidal microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) has been used widely in the food and pharmaceutical industries to suspend dense particles, prevent phase separation and stabilize emulsions. This study demonstrates that colloidal MCC has the same functionalities in waterborne coatings. It significantly improves the in-can shelf stability of waterborne coatings without negatively impacting application properties...

The earliest measuring instruments used to evaluate wet and dry coatings were the human eye and hand. Today's instruments do more, do it faster and do it better, but terms such as thumb tack, touch dry and rubout serve to remind us of the old approach. Today we take it for granted that a thickness measuring instrument will store hundreds (or thousands) of data points readily, thus saving us valuable time which can be used later in trying to make sense of statistical analyses of the data. That's no longer news - so what is? Company names are provided in this review to assist readers in identifying whether a particular technology may be of interest. This does not imply (unless it is specifically indicated) that the named companies are the only providers of any of the techniques or instruments described...

Built at a cost of AUD 51 million and brimming with technical innovations, the new 10-story Melbourne City Council building - known as CH2 - has been awarded the first six star design rating from the country's Green Building Council...

For designers, the consumers' affinity for product differentiation is driving color customization in directions never before imagined. Until recently, the cost an