Polyamine Curing Agents Industry Need for Meeting the Enhanced Productivity

By Michael Cook, Sudhir Ananthachar, Shiying Zheng

In the challenging world of  industrial, protective, and marine coatings, two-component (2K) epoxy systems are established as the benchmark technologies due to the combined offerings of excellent corrosion protection and compliance with regional volatile organic compound standards. Today, productivity has emerged as a major driver, and innovation focuses on developing epoxy coatings that have greater application versatility while providing enhanced performance properties, such as dry speed, rapid recoat, and through-cure.

For marine and protective coatings, the need is for faster cure and blush-resistant coatings when applied under adverse, low temperatures conditions. In the OEM sector, the wet-on-wet application process means there is a requirement for epoxy systems to provide rapid overcoatability with polyurethane and/or polycarbamide topcoats within minutes after initial application of the primer.

In this sector, the drivers are to increase overall productivity with faster application of multiple layers coupled with lower bake temperatures which can provide energy savings.