A Biobased, Zero-VOC Coalescent for Architectural and Industrial Coatings

By Zuzanna Donnely

In the coatings industry, the concept of sustainably is becoming increasingly important, whether to meet regulatory requirements or growing customer and consumer expectations.1,2 Sustainability is also a significant driver for coatings innovations.3,4,5 The United Nations has adopted a list of 17 “Sustainable Development Goals”6 that seek to define a blue-print for sustainability on a global scale.

Many of these relate to sustainability in coatings, such as reducing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and greenhouse gases and replacing fossil fuel-based products with biosourced materials.7,5 With these UN Sustainable Development Goals in mind, a new coalescent technology for waterborne paints that meets the zero-VOC requirement as measured by ASTM D6886 and has a high biobased carbon content of 96% as measured by ASTM D6866 has been developed.

This goal of the study described in this article is to evaluate the performance of this product in several representative architectural and industrial water-borne paint formulations and benchmark performance against other VOC and zero-VOC coalescents available on the market.

Performance of this new coalescent was evaluated in a range of waterborne binder chemistries, including all acrylic, vinyl acrylic, styrene acrylic hybrid, and self-crosslinking acrylic systems in several architectural and industrial maintenance paint formulations. This new coalescent technology was found to compare favorably with commercial zero-VOC coalescents in architectural coatings formulations. In industrial coatings formulations, substitution of VOC solvents, in whole or in part, with this new technology allows for significant lowering of overall formulation VOC while maintaining good coating performance.

Improved metal adhesion and impact properties were observed with retention of high gloss and good corrosion resistance.