Revista Paint & Pintura - Edição 239

CLIPPING vast experience in various activities involving the paint and coatings industry, such as development, application, supply chain, and production. With this profile, Torres has brought a new approach to Covestro’s interactions with customers and partners. WETTING & DISPERSING AGENTS - PERFORMANCE- DRIVEN EFFICIENCY Dispersing and wetting agents provide significant benefits in the formulation of paints and coatings, such as pigment wetting, reduced viscosity, efficient grinding, higher pig- ment concentration or even enhanced tinting strength. For the numerous benefits they offer, dispersing agents are really important in a formulation. The main requirements from the paint and coatings industries they have to meet today or to improve pigment stability after grinding, to have the pigment achieve optimal color and shade development, and to do all that while being competitively priced. “Now, when it comes to wetting agents, in addition to the role they play in reducing surface tension, by fostering improved wetting of both pigments and substrates, to create beauti- fully coated surfaces featuring excellent leveling and gloss, it is also important for these products to be compatible with various kinds of systems while, especially, leading to low foam formation to avoid problems during application,” Marlon Braidott, technical consultant on additives for BASF in South America, says. New requirements and applications stimulate the develo- pment of these additives. In addition, consumers, too, are demanding better products frompaint companies, which leads them to invest in the development of solutions that deliver both enhanced performance and sustainability, according to Evonik’s Coating Additives business manager Regina Kaway. “In addition to making sure the materials they use are sustai- nable, manufacturers want their additives to add flexibility in terms of applications, color stability and greater hiding power, among other features, and they also want these additives to cover solvent-borne andwaterborne aswell as radiation-curing systems,” she remarks. Paint additives have been increasingly versatile, while being applied at lower and lower rates to just as effective at reducing viscosity and fostering and increase in pigment concentration, tinting strength and product stability over time for a broad range of pigments, according to BYK chemist Andréia Kobal Campos de Carvalho. “In addition to these considerations, there’s trend among customers toward picking out environ- mentally friendly additives, including low-VOC or even VOC- -free ones. For waterborne coatings, the chief demand from manufactures is for additives that won’t impact the coating’s corrosion and stain resistance, which usually have towith their hydrophilic nature,” Ms. Carvalho concluded. POLYURETHANE RESINS - HIGH PERFORMANCE Suppliers of polyurethane resins have kept pace with the developing requirements for sustainability and environment-friendliness, while providing increasingly multi-functional solutions that deliver high efficiency and productivity. Polyurethane resins are polymers resulting from a condensation reaction between polyisocyanates and compounds containing hydroxyl groups (polyols, polyesters), which can be divided into flexible and hard. “In the paint and coatings industry, these resins have been standing out in formulations of industrial, furniture, flooring, maritime and many other coatings. Among their chief features in the Brazilian marketpla- ce, we can name the great hardness, high chemical strength and outstanding abrasion resistance that they impart to the coating film, which has put these products in very high demand over the past several ye- ars. One other extremely important factor driving this major growth in use of these polymers is an extensive