Applications of Emulsion Polymers

Despite the favorable atmosphere for the environmentally friendly polymer systems, formulation chemists must learn to work with latex products and very often they will find it very difficult to handle the water-based coating and 

Principles md Applications of Emulsion Polymerization, by Chorng-Shyan Chem Copyright 2008 by John Wiley Sons, Inc. 

The colloidal stability issue associated with the extremely large oil-water interfacial area of latex particles has been covered in Chapter 2. Other important factors that affect the ultimate performance properties of water-based coating and printing systems are covered in this chapter, even though some of these critical issues might not be directly related to the emulsion polymers themselves. 

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This book is aimed at MSc students, Ph.D. students and reasonably experienced chemists in university, government or industrial laboratories, but not necessarily experts in emulsion polymerisation or the properties and applications of emulsion polymers. For this audience, which is often struggling with the theory of emulsion polymerisation kinetics, this book will explain how theory came about from well-designed experiments, making equations plausible and intuitive. Another issue experienced, especially in the industry, is that coupling theory and everyday practice in latex production is really hard. This is another aim of the book showing how theory works out in real life. 

As a part of the interest for more advanced applications of emulsion polymers, many have investigated the different ingredients in the polymerisation. In the beginning, different... 

This chapter will cover the applications of emulsion polymers in the paper industry. Today this industry consumes a volume of ca. 1.8 million metric tons of latex (dry) worldwide, mostly in surface sizing and paper coating. In western Europe about 3% of the paper industry s consumption of emulsion polymers go into surface sizing and 97% into paper coating. 

Carpet backing is - after paints, paper and adhesives applications - the fourth largest bulk application of emulsion polymers. About 700 000 tons per year (dry) are used worldwide, mainly as binder for the backing of tufted carpets. The function of a carpet backing is to anchor the pile fibres in place and to improve dimensional stability of the tufted material. 

A wide variety of other specialty monomers are also used to provide specialized performance properties for coating applications. For example, amine functional monomers can be used to improve adhesion to aged alkyd substrates. Specialized monomers can also be used to improve exterior durability, for example VEOVA (vinyl ester of vesatic acid) monomers can improve the hydrolysis resistance of vinyl acetate polymers, and n-butyl methacrylate can be used to enhance the durabiHty of BA-MMA acrylics. Polymer hydrophobicity can be fine tuned by varying the levels of hydrophobic and hydrophilic monomers in the composition and styrene or ethyl hexyl acrylate are used to increase film hydrophobicity and reduce water permeability in BA-MMA systems. Specialty monomers are also used to provide specific chemical functionality to polymer compositions. For example, hydroxyethyl methacrylate can be used to provide hydroxyl functionality to acrylic resins, allowing these polymers to be used in cross-linkable thermoset coatings which cure via melamine chemistry. While specialty monomers are used at relatively low levels in polymer compositions, they frequently provide the performance features needed for the successful application of emulsion polymers in many coating areas. 

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