Highly tranparent water-based wood clear coats with engeneered perlite

 
The wood coatings market is moving to water-based systems, responding to customers increased environmental and health awareness and related regulations. Clear coats refer to products forming a protective and aesthetical transparent film. Minerals are already used in multiple indoor and outdoor wood clear coats systems to provide matting. However, many of these natural or synthetic inorganic additives do impact the transparency even at low amounts in the clear coats formulations. Taking advantage of the broadest mineral range, we studied the benefits of introducing these materials in a clear coat system. Imerys research has demonstrated that engineered perlite can successfully improve the transparency of waterborne wood clear coats at the same gloss level as existing matting agents. Extended research work is on-going to provide a mineral solution in solvent-based clear coats, which still represent the majority of the wood coating market today.