DevEX Product Lifecycle Management in Paint, Ink, and Coatings
Trends may dictate a portion of the trade for paint, ink, and coatings. The colors do in fact, play a significant role in the formulations that reside in their vast proprietary databases.
But the dramatic movement in the conglomerations can be seen in the push to be sustainable. While other corporations can simply substitute alternate ingredients, this industry faces a distinctive set of issues. They rely on pigments for the vibrancy and durability of their product. To ensure the best quality, they must have equally-sized and distributed particles for a high-quality finish. Unevenly sized particles will clump (flocculate) and give a lumpy, low-quality result.
Traditionally, companies have added dispersants to change the ionic strength and create a higher quality of dispersion. The problem results when they change out the traditional ingredients with water-based coatings. In the EU project, “Environmentally Friendly High Performance Waterborne Coatings,” they discovered that while they could not immediately create a universal model to predict rheology, they were able to create an exciting plan for research in this area for the participating companies.
While some companies seek to be more sustainable, others seek to be even healthier, making their products not only NOT harmful, but good for you. In the Paint & Coatings Industry article, “Moving Beyond Aesthetics,” we see how corporations now look to include antimicrobial technology in the paint and coatings where germs are most prevalent and people are most susceptible.
Currently aimed at hospitals and government agencies, the mass-market appeal can be easily extrapolated based on the wide-spread use of antibacterial soaps and gels. The latest breakthrough is completely different in size and scope than the past. It utilizes nanotechnology to take what the ancient Phoenicians once new—that silver destroyed mold and fungus (they kept their water in silver pots).
Using nanotechnology, corporations can release the silver technology in its ionic state to combat bacteria from replicating by causing the cell wall to actually collapse or burst. Better yet, silver has a low risk for bacteria resistance and has proven effective in low concentrate, and has not been proven to have a negative rate on dry times.
The Paint, Ink, and Coating industry has more than just a new color wheel to display, they have a whole new outlook to make consumers breathe much easier.