Revista Paint & Pintura - Edição 238

CLIPPING 8 | PAINT&PINTURA | Novembro 2018 Indecorativepaints, quality is directly tied to the thickeners used, inasmuchas they are themain ingredient responsible for ensuring various properties in their formulation, such as paint stability, transfer and leveling, low spattering and other properties, leading thickener suppliers to work harder and harder at developing new products for deco- rative paint manufacturers, according Marlon Braidott, technical consultant on dispersions, resins and additives for BASF’s Coatings & Construction business in South America. “Certainattributes, suchas lowwater absorption and resistance to viscosity reduction in tinting systems, are some of the properties expected from thickeners in the paint and coatings industry,” he said. Accordingly, thickeners are indispensable when it comes to developing a variety of properties that add value to several kinds of paints and coatings. “It’s worth pointing out that formulators are increasingly seeking alternate materials that will add benefits to the end products, to say nothing of being environmentally friendly. Low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) water-based paints have been gaining ground and driving suppliers of raw mate- rials to focus their efforts on providing environmentally compliant solutions,” Regina Kawai, Evonik’s Coating Additives business manager, adds. MONOMERS - TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGH Monomers play an essential part in the paint manufactu- ringprocess. Choosing the rightmonomer is the key to the end-product performance and competitiveness of paints and coatings. For this reason, paint companies are in the market for suppliers who provide acrylic monomers in a reliable manner and at competitive prices that meet not only currentmarket requirements, but alsoanticipate futu- re one, while being products that usher new technologies into the region, according to BASF Petrochemicals senior sales manager Valter Milani. “They rely on their suppliers’ expertise on quality and product safety issues. BASF, for our part, having made a major investment in acrylic pro- duction facilities in Camaçari, Bahia and Guaratinguetá, São Paulo, is introducing to the market two specialty acrylicmonomers: tBA, designed for acrylic emulsions and dispersions for pure acrylic paints, andBEPGMA, designed for associative acrylic thickeners for thewater-basedpaint segment,” Milani points out, adding that BASF provides a broad rangeof acrylic andmethacrylicmonomers, andhas a whole technical team available to help customers have these market needs and requirements met and reduce their overall formulation costs. Provedell director Ricardo Provedel also says that in the market for UV-curing paints and varnishes, more techno- logies that can meet the requirements of particular seg- ments for specific properties like adhesion, chemical strength, weatherability and solvent-resistance, among others, are in growingly high demand. “While monomers do cover a very broad application spectrum, the wood and furniture industry is clearly the leading consumer in terms of volume, followed by printing varnishes. However, the UV-curing technology has been used in plastics, vacuum metallization, and even in nail polishes. For this reason, UV-curing paints have been growing at a much faster pace than conventional ones are, especially for featuring such properties as high production speed, zero- -VOC and good chemical strength. In this context, meaning in UV-curing products, monomers have become paramount, accounting for 20 to 40 percent of the composition of a generic paint or coating formulation.” OXYGENATED SOLVENTS - PERFORMANCE COMBINED WITH LOW TOXICITY The technological evolution in the paint and coatings industry has increasingly demanded oxygenated solvents that deliver improved performance, as well as great value for money in the process. Nevertheless, oxygenated solvents are expected to add flexibility to paint and coatings formulations, ensure resin solubility, and adjust formulation drying times, while providing a balancing action, imparting efficiency to the application and improving the final looks of the coating film, not to mention their excellent cost-benefit ratios, according to Oxiteno’s Paints & Coatings global business head FabianaMarra. “There a growing demand in the marketplace for products featuring lower toxicity, or lower VOC levels, and low impact rating according to the GHS, all with no compromise whatsoever on performance and competitiveness.” According to Daniel Franco, global vice president of Solvents at Solvay, the paint and coatings industry demands engineered solvent performance in the products to which oxygenated solvents are applied, as well as low toxicity and low VOC emissions. “Originating from renewable sources is has also been more and more of a required property of oxygenated solvents, particularly in applicationswhere coatings are applied by exporters of finished products.” As regards the development of this industry, Franco says that Solvay has recorded good sales volumes in various market segments where its oxygenated solvents are used. “For the first half of 2018, Solvay had record sales of oxygenated sol- vents, despite having faced - as have all other manufacturers in the industry - an adverse economic environment, hitting rock bottom with the truckers’ strike, which all but brought the entire country to a halt for two weeks, not to mention the instability in the exchange rate and the country’s political situation. Compared to the same period of the previous two years, sales rose by nearly 8 percent, boosted by the addition to our oxygenated solvent portfolio the acetic and ketonic