Price: 10.00
Due to environmental and regulatory concerns, the use of volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) in coatings is going to become more and more
restricted.
One alternative offered to the final end user is either water based
formulations in which VOCs are replaced by water, or 100 % solids systems.
Most of the time, waterborne formulations are based on emulsion
technology in which some amount of solvent is needed to ensure the coalescence
of the film. Moreover, some application problems such as foaming, substrate
wetting, surface aspect defects, are often encountered with this kind of
technology. The use of water reducible binders allows these drawbacks to be
avoided. Unfortunately, there are not many binders available on the market place.
The use of 100 % solids radiation curable formulations is another mean
to replacing solvent based systems. Sometimes, when very low viscosity is
required, some organic solvent could be added to the formulation. This practice
limits the interest of this technology. From our point of view, the use of water
instead of VOCs is much more convenient when water soluble binders are
available. Water is an interesting solvent as it is neither toxic nor expensive and it
gives very efficient viscosity reduction in formulations.
