High renewable content binders for ecological waterborne coatings

 
Waterborne coatings are increasingly preferred over solventborne technologies for health and ecological reasons related to solvent emissions. Additional improvements in the ecological performance of coatings are usually limited to small amount ingredients such as surfactants, neutralizing agents and other additives. Thus, in order to achieve high renewable contents, the polymeric binder must be addressed. Common greener alternatives to traditional acrylic and vinyl acetate chemistries are alkyd emulsions. However these binders frequently contain high amounts of emulsifiers. Resiquímica's experience with different families of polymers led us to develop two resins based on renewable raw materials without any solvents, water, emulsifiers or neutralizing agents. These resins achieve 80% and 100% biobased content and can easily be incorporated into waterborne coatings. In this paper we present results from the use of these resins in several decorative coatings, including Ecolabel formulations. Results are compared to vinyl acetate and acrylic binders.