We are on the verge of an industrial revolution in which digital, smart and green technologies are just beginning to set in motion.
In these days of fast-paced technological advances, you will be able to find the outstanding trends, innovations and technologies in the paint & coating industries below.
First of all, let’s examine briefly what these concepts above mean in a clear fashion:
What is Trend?
Have you ever realized that we are using the word trend very frequently in our daily life? Fashion trends, economic trends, political trends…
Trend is, in a nutshell, a general direction in which something is developing or changing! That is, the words or concepts showing the goings/tendency in the specific industry or other fields.
Change in life is inevitable; therefore, we often need to guess the change or progress that will take place in the near or far future by some means like trends.
It would be highly beneficial to look at the trends -which can also be seen as the starting point of these technologies – before passing onto the new technologies in the above headings.
Paint and Coating Industries – Trends
• The desire to perform more work with less labor.
• High demand for longer durability, less maintenance / repair paint & coating systems.
• Lower total paint/coating film thickness and fewer paint/ coating layers within the paint / coating system.
• Green Chemistry / Industry: International Environmental Regulations and the resultant need for the new chemicals that give much less harm to our atmosphere, living beings, and environment.
• Globalization and the need for more effective interaction amongst humans.
• Urbanization and related needs for improving life quality.
• Recent industry revolution called as INDUSTRY 4.0 and its related needs: The Internet of Objects (IOT), Big Data, Cloud Computing, Sensors, Cyber-Physical Systems and Robotic Technologies.
What is Innovation?
Coming from Latin language, how would you summarize this word in just one sentence? Most probably, the following explanation would suffice your need above:
“To put what’s new into action’ in social, economic and industrial fields to meet our ever-growing needs and ever- changing conditions.”
These new things can be entirely or an alternate version of an established practice. Innovations -whether we are aware or not- are in fact an integral part of our lives as of today. Yet, people/corporations/nations that are not using it are lagging in the civilization race.
This well-known truth is documented in various sources. (For more information about the relation between the innovation and civilization race in terms of socio-economical terms, you can take a look at OECD reports under the topic “Innovation” covering the year 2000 and past.)
Consequently, with the help of innovations, the Paint & Coating technologies at our age are changing in a very fast fashion and shape our future.
What is Technology?
We also use this term at our daily life very frequently. However, if asked about the simple description of this term, what would you say? Let’s listen Dr. Rüştü Bozkurt – who is a Turkish management guru and reputable economist journalist – explaining briefly this term in just one sentence:
“Technology is achieving what human cannot do with his/her bare power, by the tools and methods which has discovered by using his/her mind.” When we it comes to “New technology”, we mean the technologies spanning the past 15-20 years in the Painting and Coating industries and invented mostly by American, Asian, Australian and European Researches and institutions.
We’ll discuss these technologies, which are relatively new in most developing countries like Turkey and may still be unknown or in the utilization stage by these countries.
How Can These Technologies in the Painting & Coating Industries be Classified?
In order to make this article easier to read and follow, we can classify these technologies at the next page.
Now, let’s examine these new technologies one by one:
Paint and Coating Industries – New Technologies
Let’s start talking about the new technologies by explain the 4 main headings we have classified above: firstly, the two most important steps of a paint / coating project are the surface preparation and the paint / coating application steps.
Some of the new technologies about the chemicals used in both steps that have emerged in recent years are below.
1.1 Chemical Substances / Materials Used for Surface Preparation
The conventional cleaning chemical used in this industry are solvent or alcohol based chemicals. However, instead of these, bio-based or solvent-free&alcohol-free chemicals in the form of powder, liquid or gel are developed and studies are still going on to make them better in performance and safety.
As a result of these studies, these chemical chemicals mentioned above, are being awarded as green by various professional organizations around the world.
One of the methods of surface preparation is the method known as abrasive blasting. The materials used during this surface preparation process are generally referred to as the abrasive. These are, small, hard, angular metallic or plastic materials.
In recent years, these metallic or plastic materials have been proven to induce certain environmental and health related problems. As a result, like the cleaning chemicals above, natural or manufactured materials that can be biodegradable are nominated to replace the metallic or plastic abrasives.
Agricultural products prepared by thoroughly grinding and filtering, such as walnut / hazelnut shell or corn cob or specially manufactured abrasives, such as garnet, olivine or staurolite which are basically mineral-based abrasives can be counted as examples.
1.2 Chemical Substances / Materials Used for Paint / Coating Manufacturing
In this sector, for the reasons mentioned in the TRENDS paragraph above, innovative raw materials and chemical end products with the following new technologies have been introduced.
It is worth mentioning some technological advances in chemical raw materials such as binder, pigment, solvent, resin and other additives which are the building blocks of the final products to be discussed below. Featured progress areas include:
• Polymeric buildings with higher molecular bonding.
• Multi-function pigment and additives.
• Innovative production methods (such as nanotechnology and sol-gel).
• Green technology solvents, which are produced by biochemical routes and which do not contain petroleum products, are less harmful to nature.
1.2.1 Biofunctional Paints & Coatings
Due to the trend of using less harmful to the environment chemicals mentioned above, bio-based chemicals have been used instead of petroleum-derived chemicals such as epoxy, polyurethane, paint / coating technologies used in their formulations.
For example, in water-based polyurethane technologies being developed, bio-based conjugate chemicals are used in place of petroleum-derived polyols in their formulations.
Bio-functional paints are gaining popularity due to the environmental trends worldwide.
1.2.2 Smart Coatings
Smart paints/coatings should have indications of senses unexpected from theirselves such as healing and reacting to their environment.
For example, such paints and coatings can be Hygienic Paints / Coatings that can absorb a germ or bacteria when exposed to them, that can change color when the temperature rises, that can heal itself when damaged (self-healing), that clean itself when gets dirty (self-cleaning) or that can produce energy when they expose to the sun (photovoltaic).
In our upcoming part of this article, we will look at hybrid paints/coatings which have been quite popular due to having the best of two or chemical groups in one new formulation such as silicones and epoxies in the innovative polysiloxane paints/ coatings technology.
PCS. Tolga Dıraz / Chemical Engineer / Protective Coating Specialist / TUCSA TK-4 Surface Protection Committee Chair
References
1. Corrosion Prevention by Protective Coatings – Charles G. Munger & Louis D. Vincent – NACE International
2. The Protective Coating User’s Handbook – Louis D. Vincent
3. BASF Coatings’ Global Trend Book – BASF’s Coatings division
4. Selecting Coatings for Industrial and Marine Structures – SSPC publications
5. ASM Handbook, Volume 5B: Protective Organic Coatings
6. Paint and Surface Coatings –Theory and Practice- R Lambourne T A Strivens – Woodhead Publishing
7. https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/trend
8. http://www.turkceanlaminedir.com/trend-62082
9. https://www.coatingsworld.com/knowledge-center/coatings- markets-amp-technologies/market-trends-amp-forecast
10. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/innovation
