Engineered  Polysaccharides: A Novel Biomaterial Additive with Multifunctional Properties

By Stephen Raper, Sara Harris, Doug Corrigan, Kyle Kim, Christian Lenges

Advances in the performance of formulated products through material innovation continue to drive innovation and growth. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly paramount that new materials are also sourced from ideally renewable and overall more sustainable feedstocks using benign processes to meet criteria required within a circular economy context.

Progress in architectural and industrial coatings has focused on providing not only improved paint performance but also optimizing aspects such as pigment efficiency (e.g., reduction of TiO₂) and effective gloss management, while maintaining key characteristics such as abrasion performance and overall coating properties. At the same time, continued emphasis has been placed on reducing the environmental footprint through lower volatile organic content (VOC) in paint systems.

In addition, increasing efforts have been directed to eventually replace typical petroleum-derived building blocks in coatings formulations with more sustainable, potentially renewable material alternatives. However, the transition to performance-advantaged renew-able building blocks, which are accessible at an enabling cost position and are also based on fungible, readily available raw materials produced in a sustainable and scalable industrial process, remains challenging across material industries.

This article discusses one specific example of renewable based additive technology to meet the stated industry performance needs and objectives.