Going Green: making reality match ambition for sustainable coil coatings

The European Commission has launched a €79 billion research and innovation program with the aim of bringing Europe to the forefront of bio-sustainable material research and development and encouraging activities which contribute to the EU’s stated sustainability strategies. This is creating exciting opportunities as new, more sustainable raw materials become available for use in many different industries including coatings for pre-painted applications. This article focuses on one sustainability approach—the framework for strategic sustainable development highlighting not only long-term goals for fully sustainable coil coatings but describing various pathways currently open for sustainable development of coil coatings. It also describes some of the general challenges formulators face trying to reduce dependence on petroleum-based and high environmental impact raw materials. Two examples are used from coatings’ R and D to illustrate these points. Analysis of weathering of bio-based exterior durable products by a variety of techniques is described. Techniques such as AFM, CFM, and PAS-FTIR have been chosen to compliment the traditional assessment techniques for weathered coatings, as a means to understand the links between macro-changes in topography and appearance with the micron-scale physical and chemical changes both on the surface and in the bulk of the exposed film. This work has demonstrated that by careful selection of bio-based monomers, coatings can be formulated with equivalent durability performance to existing petroleum-based coatings at the same time as introducing more sustainable content into the paint film. The second example is an evaluation of the structure—property relationships of bio-sustainable resin monomers aimed at the white goods market, where a high degree of formability and resistance to staining and marking is required. Experimental design-based studies show potential to reduce petroleum-based aromatic acid content without a compromise on film T_g, among other properties.