Environment and the impact of adhesive technology

Environmental conditions under which solvent release from the adhesive on the substrate is produced must be carefully controlled (see Environment and the impact of adhesive technology). Humidity is critical because loss of heat due to solvent evaporation may allow reaching the dew point (the evaporation of the solvent is an endothermic process), and then condensation of water on the adhesive can be produced (moisture blooming). The presence of water on the adhesive film causes a detrimental effect because the autoadhesion of rubber chains is greatly inhibited. 

Some of the main advantages of emulsion adhesives include the relatively fast bond development (dependent upon specific substrate and bonding conditions) compared to that obtained with solution adhesives. The carrier phase (water) is cheap and environmentally safe (see Health and safety and Environment and the impact of adhesive technology). Copolymer systems, in particular, can be formulated to give very good adhesion to many difficult substrate surfaces. 

Environmental sustainability is a concept fundamentally rooted in ethics and philosophy but has strong technological ramifications. In this article, the implications of sustainability and attitudes towards it are considered. In a further article. Environment and the impact of adhesive technology, practical consequences relating to the use of adhesives are discussed. 

The principle issues where the use of adhesives impacts on sustainability are considered in Environment and the impact of adhesive technology. 

Selection of a pre-treatment may well depend on striking a balance between convenience and effectiveness. A proper assessment of convenience and effectiveness will take account of the potential damage to the Health and safety of operators and of the general public as well as the environmental impact of disposal of waste materials (Environment and the impact of adhesive technology). Whichever treatment is chosen, the recipes cited (Refs. [1-4]) should be regarded as a starting point for a series of experiments aimed at optimizing the process variables for the particular application involved. 

Research is now strongly centred on prodncing primers with low volatile organic contents, by using water as the primary solvent or dispersion medium or actual water-based primers where the organic solvent content is zero. For similar reasons of Environment and the impact of adhesive technology, a move to non-chromate systems is also under way. 

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