A New Soybean Oil-based Reactive Diluent for Low-VOC Solventborne Wood Stains

By Wumin Yu , Zhigang Chen

Solventborne coatings are facing increasingly strict volatile organic compound (VOC) regulations. It is a challenge to reduce their VOC contents while maintaining their low cost and high performance. In this study, we have developed a low-cost, soybean oil-based reactive diluent that can significantly reduce the VOC contents of solventborne air-drying alkyd wood stains. The reactive diluent was synthesized by a two-step process.

A soy intermediate composed of a mixture of mono-hydroxyl functional soy derivatives was first prepared by reacting soybean oil with mono-hydroxyl functional amines such as ethanolamine.