Basecoat, active

Papasavva et al. [36] showed diagrams of auto paint lines that indicated abatement on the solvent-borne primer/surfacer ovens, on the heated flashed zone after waterborne basecoat application, and on the solvent-bome clearcoat oven. The abatement equipment included a carbon concentrator, which is likely a device for solvent vapor adsorption on activated carbon. A collection efficiency of 90% was reported. The abatement equipment also included a system for oxidizing the vapors to form water and carbon dioxide. These units were called reactive thermal oxidizers (RTOs) [36], and their destruction efficiency was reported to be 95%. For the various scenarios discussed in Section 6.7.2, the abatement efficiencies were reported to range from 52.3 to 62.5%. Emissions from powder coatings ovens are expected to be so low that abatement is not needed, and calculations with and without powder coating oven abatement gave the same results for VOC emission [36]. 

Automotive paint weathering research is based on measurement of chemical changes by means of FTIR (all coating layers), transmittance UV (clearcoat only) and ESR (determination of active HALS content of clearcoat and basecoat slices from weathered test panels) [826]. Gerlock et al. [827,... 

Polymers can best be cleaned using a solvent or detergent cleaning process. Often the polymer must be outgassed or coated with a basecoat to prevent outgassing and outdiffusion. The polymer surface may be activated by plasma treatment to improve film nucleation on the surface. 

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