Axalta Presents Advances in Powder Coatings for Corrosion Protection and Visual Appeal

Chemists Christopher Lopez and Reena Reddy from Axalta Coating Systems will present their work on powder coatings at FABTECH 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia on November 11th and 12th. The metal forming, fabricating, welding, and finishing event is estimated to attract 27,000 attendees. Lopez’s talk will showcase the use of Axalta’s fusion bonded epoxy (FBE) powder coatings that are designed to help protect metal pipelines for transporting oil, gas or water. Reddy’s presentation will focus on Axalta’s powder coatings that have metallic visual effects for exterior and interior applications.

FBE powder coatings are widely used to help protect pipeline structures from corrosion, given that they are formulated to offer enhanced physical and chemical stability, resistance to soil stress, adhesion to metal, and resistance to abrasion and corrosion mitigation.

“Properties of the FBE are affected by selection of epoxy resin and other components, such as curing agents, pigments and additives,” described Lopez. “When we develop our FBE coatings, we consider not only the coating properties that we desire, such as corrosion protection, flexibility, impact resistance and chemical resistance, but also the application process that our customers use to apply the coatings. In addition, we also provide a variety of powder coating systems such as single layer systems and dual layer systems to help meet our customers’ needs,” Lopez emphasized.

The durability and stability of powder coatings can help to maintain the structural integrity of the underlying metal that they are designed to protect. However, when special effect metallic pigments, such as aluminum, gold, bronze or copper are used in powder coatings, the “visual appeal” is sometimes the customer’s key property. Reddy and her team identified factors that influence the optical properties of the metallic pigments in powder coatings.

“Solid color powder coating overspray can often be recovered and returned to the coating system to help allow customers to achieve nearly 100% use of powder coating materials. There is a process called bonding in metallic effect coatings where the pigments are fused to the powder particles to help allow for excellent reclamation,” explained Reddy. “When proper effect pigments are selected, we can have a durable coating finish with an appealing anodized metallic visual appearance using only a single layer of powder coating. The layer is formulated to provide good protection and an aesthetic benefit that helps to reduce material use and coating costs for our customers,” Reddy added.

“Axalta powder coatings are offered to be used in many industrial applications for aesthetics and protection purposes, including architectural, pipeline and automotive,” said Dr. Fred Allen, Axalta’s Global Technology Director of Powder Coatings. “We are committed to working closely with our customers to understand their needs and to continue to develop products and coating processes to help meet those needs, whether a customer needs a coating with exceptional corrosion or impact resistance, or a coating with visual pizzazz.”

Additional Axalta powder coating experts are also scheduled to present at FABTECH 2014. Presentation titles include: Building Blocks of a Powder Coating System, presented by Bill Owens; Troubleshooting Your Powder Coating Operation, presented by Mike Wittenhagen; Basic Concepts of Powder Coating (Spanish) and Advanced Concepts of Powder Coating (Spanish), both presented by Mentor Leal; and Trends in Architectural Powder Coatings, presented by Michael Withers.