Waterborne wood coatings based on sugar: Fid-Bau Portal

Waterborne wood coatings based on sugar

Deppe, O. / Vymetalikova, B.

The finiteness of fossil feedstock forces us today to tap renewable sources for raw materials for future chemical industry. That applies to coating industries too. Consumers environmental consciousness leads to the substitution of solvent-borne coatings by waterborne products and usage of renewable raw materials. Novel polymer dispersions with high proportion of renewable resources are being investigated at Fraunhofer WKI as binders for waterborne adhesives and coatings for wood and wood-based materials. Acrylic dispersions are one of the most important classes of binders in the coating sector. The application scope of acrylic dispersions as binders for wood coatings is wide. Sugar derivatives are incorporated in acrylic dispersions, which exhibit equal and also novel properties compared to the commercial petrochemical products. From low-molecular saccharides as starting material radically polymerisable sugar methacrylates had been synthesized in two-steps reactions which were copolymerised with commercial and renewable acrylic monomers by means of emulsion polymerisation. Radical polymerisable monosaccharide on the basis of renewable materials forms a technically functioning alternative to synthetic raw materials for the emulsion polymerization of acrylic dispersions. The properties of acrylic dispersions can be controlled by the production process and the recipe. Renewable resources are present at a rate of more than 60% based on the solids content of the binder. The generated lab-scale product is preferably suitable for furniture lacquers.