Smoothing the shift to water-based wood coatings

Take Shou Sugi Ban (or Yakisugi)-style charred timber, whose popularity has surged well beyond its traditional Japanese origins, and use as exterior siding and decking. Used increasingly for interior flooring, decorative wall cladding, and furniture, it embodies the wider movement around choosing wood for homes and commercial spaces. Importantly, it also reflects a shift to protecting and enhancing the qualities and aesthetics of nature’s gifted building material in a more sustainable way.

Coatings play a vital role in achieving these goals by making wood more durable and better equipped to endure the elements and the demands of daily life. Water-based coatings are a move in the right direction and are becoming the new standard for many applications as they emit low VOCs (volatile organic compounds), are low odor, non-hazardous, non-flammable, and can be quick to dry. But not yet all. All-round acceptance is being affected by some current limitations in matching solvent alternatives and the performance expectations of formulators and consumers. However, these challenges present exciting opportunities for product development.

Going water-based gives manufacturers a route for improving a coating’s environmental impact, and for reducing carbon footprint.  

Elevating performance while reducing carbon footprint

Renewable-based additives that will help water-based coatings work hard to protect the wood, withstand wear and tear, and deliver on consumers’ surface finish preferences can make a positive difference. Improved dispersibility enables the use of micronized waxes in aqueous coatings 100% bio-based wax creates opportunity to reduce fossil carbon in formulations. The coating meets consumer aesthetic preferences with its visually appealing finish

Clariant was recognised at the 2023 Ringier Innovation Award for its 100% bio-based micronized wax Ceridust® 8091 Vita. The product received an award for its contribution to progressing more responsible, cleaner manufacturing. Based on 100% renewable, non-food competing raw material, it stands out as water-based solution that is very easy to disperse and brings outstanding scratch resistance and scuff resistance to an aqueous coating system. While also delivering an exceptionally silky and comfortable touch. Products such as wood doors, floors and furniture will stay looking good for longer, during handling and use. The innovation even gives a high water-repellence effect to water-based acrylic lacquer.

“Many conventional additives, such as conventional micronized waxes, cannot be used directly in aqueous systems due to poor dispersibility. To address this issue, Clariant offers an easily dispersible solution for aqueous coatings, Ceridust 8091 Vita, a 100% bio-based micronized wax with excellent application performance whose benefits can ease the transition to creating water-based wood coatings products for consumers,” says Wei Zhang, Technical Business Development Manager, Coatings & Adhesives APAC.

Clariant is has been frontrunner in its sustainability focus to support coatings. It offers a number of renewable-based formulation ingredients with accompanying product carbon footprints to help the industry viably integrate a higher percentage of bio-based components in their products.  

Additives elevate paint workability and performance  

Clariant announced the launch of a set of wetting and dispersing agents that enable coatings’ manufacturers to extend the open time of their acrylic lacquers and polyurethane (PU) lacquers, and lengthen current post-application correction windows for these water-based systems.

“The switch from solvent to water-based paint systems has made the control of the drying and film-forming process a key property for all paint formulators. Particularly within the decorative and industrial coatings markets, increasing the workability time to fix painting errors on a freshly applied film and avoid permanent visible brush marks can add value to help differentiate a brand’s product for users. We are providing paint manufacturers with pre-assessed, easy-to-compare solutions to support their product development and open time goals,” comments Sebastian Prock, Head of Marketing Industrial Applications, BU Care Chemicals, Clariant.

Customers can have confidence in finding the perfect match for their specific requirements from the new portfolio. Clariant has used its two new industry-leading in-house open-time testing methods to assess each additive in both paint systems using fast and reproducible measurements, which avoids the inaccuracy of the visual evaluation and low reproducibility of the current standard industry methods. As well as support for extending open time, the wetting and dispersing agents also offer formulators the possibility to solve multiple problems at once. The multifunctional additives have been tested for their performance regarding blocking resistance, gloss, leveling, and sagging, highlighting the potential for even more end-product improvements.

“There has been a need for quantitative determination of open time which allows for accurate comparison of paint additives and their performance. Our formulation expertise and new measuring techniques put us in a unique position to support formulators with recommendations for acrylic and PU lacquer systems, making it easier to find the right solution to extend the open time of their paints, and simultaneously other properties too,” comments Zhigang Miao, Head of Industrial Applications, BU Care Chemicals Clariant.

Clariant’s open-time extenders include EcoTain® labeled solutions recognised for their outstanding sustainability advantages.  

Adhesion promoters to mitigate materials of concern

Eastman is introducing the next generation of adhesion promoters to keep paint and coatings users compliant with regulatory changes. Advantis™ adhesion promoters limit or remove materials of concern, allowing formulators and end users to deliver dependable results while improving product sustainability and meeting regulatory requirements. 

Given the regulatory changes coming to the European Union (EU) later this year, this proves especially important and has been confirmed by trends in the industry.

“With materials like cumene being recategorized as carcinogens, formulators have two choices — continue to use these materials with their new hazardous labeling, or switch to solutions that limit or remove these materials. Eastman’s Advantis adhesion promoters offer a simple alternative to help our customers remain compliant without the need for reformulation,” said Tom Klug, segment market manager for Eastman’s automotive coatings business.

Advantis products consist of modified polypropylene and polyethylene polymers that adhere better to untreated plastics and other difficult-to-bond-to surfaces.

“Advantis solutions improve adhesion in three ways — as a primer between the substrate and subsequent coating, as a primer or tie coat between coating layers and as a stir-in formulation additive,” said Doug Wagner, technology director in Eastman’s coatings business. “Formulators tell us that reclassification of materials is a major trend across our industry, so we developed these new products as drop-in alternatives to formulations benefiting from our traditional promoters. One immediate challenge faced by formulators is the upcoming EU reclassification of cumene as carcinogenic category 1B. Our Advantis adhesion promoters are a solution that enables customers to avoid relabeling concerns of their current coatings products.”

Leveraging decades of proven science, Advantis was developed as an effortless, drop-in alternative to formulations that use traditional Eastman adhesion promoters.  Advantis adhesion promoters are commercially available as solutions, water-based dispersions and solid resins.