Green ink in all colors - Printing ink from renewable recources

 
Within the last decade, the chemical industry has put immense efforts into implementing renewable resources in the production of chemicals. Drivers for this trend are resource scarcity and security, increased legislative burden, but also a rising environmental awareness within the general public. All this results in a greater demand for such bio-based products. But besides the environmental advantages, the use of renewable resources also opens access to new materials that are not available with the traditional petrochemical pathways. The printing ink industry is no exception to this development. Even though a lot of the inks are traditionally derived from renewable resources such as colophony and vegetable oils, many new biobased printing inks with different formulations have entered the market and many printing ink manufacturers have a range of these products in their portfolio. However, there still a lot room for further improvement, as the major part of printing inks still is derived from petrochemical feedstock. Reduction of VOCs by finding alternatives to solvent- and mineral oilbased inks, replacement of petrochemical binders with bio-based resins and new UV-curing systems derived from renewable resources are of major interest in this field.