Alkylphenol Ethoxylate Alternatives for Coatings Applications
PCI
- Nov 4, 2009
Since the first use of waterborne coatings, additives have been incorporated to enhance the properties of the final coating. These additives include co-solvents, pigments, preservatives, defoamers, rheology modifiers and others. One of the most important is the wetting agent/dispersing aid. A wetting agent is a surface-active material that lowers the interfacial tension at phase boundaries. Thus, the additive improves surface and pigment wetting. More often, the wetting agent is a non-ionic surfactant, and over the past 40 years the leading surfactants utilized for this purpose have been based on alkylphenol ethoxylates. For much of this time, these nonionic surfactants provided the optimum cost/performance properties desired by coatings formulators. In 2006, sales of APEOs in the coatings market consisted of 22,700 metric tons octylphenol and 17,700 metric tons nonylphenol ethoxylates. These amounts were used both directly in coatings formulations and for emulsion polymerization. These particular ethoxylates were preferred as wetting agents because they provided cost effectiveness while maintaining adaptable properties for many coating and non-coating applications.
posted by Johan Bieleman, Consulting/ Training/ Education at Delden Advice
Well documented article, clear, easy reading.
Just would like to have in a next article data on reletive EO chain length distribution of the 3 main surfactants as well as foaming, foam stability.
Ecofriendly surfactants & wetting agents & also useful - Nov 05, 2009
posted by madhusudan bhagwat, Technical Service/ Customer Assistance at retired from job
This is an interesting article on comparative performance evaluation in terms of surfactant properties & wetting ability versus properties of the obtained coatings giving confidence to manufacturers that they can comply with recent requirements & properties desired by coaters
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