Radiation curing through LED technology for industrial parquet coating
The LED technology for UV radiation curing of parquet coatings has great potential to replace conventional mercury vapor lamps in the future. There is an opportunity to make a product more sustainable over its entire life cycle.
In a recently published work, the applicability of LED technology for industrial parquet coating was examined. The comparison of LED and mercury vapor lamps in terms of the radiant energy generated shows that the LED lamp is weaker. Nevertheless, the irradiation of the LED lamp at low belt speeds is sufficient to ensure crosslinking of UV paints. From a selection of seven photoinitiators, two were identified that are suitable for use in LED coatings. It was also shown that these photoinitiators can be used in application-related amounts in the future. In the course of the investigations, correlations between the depth of hardening and the molar extinction coefficients were also determined.
Oxygen inhibition could be counteracted by using a suitable oxygen absorber. This is a well-known challenge in LED curing. The formulations combining the two appropriate photoinitiators and the identified oxygen scavenger produced promising surface results. The application was based on the industrial process on parquet. The results show that LED technology is suitable for industrial parquet coating. However, further development work is to follow, which will deal with the optimization of the coating components, the investigation of other LED lamps and the complete prevention of surface stickiness.
Source: Paint and Varnish