The 43rd Annual Waterborne Symposium

The School of Polymers and High Performance Materials at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) held its 43rd Annual International Waterborne, High-Solids and Powder Coatings Symposium February 1-5 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Waterborne Symposium is a technical forum for environmentally friendly coatings technologies. Proceeds from the symposium are used by USM for various elements of academic program development including junior faculty development, graduate student stipends, equipment acquisition and maintenance, and especially scholarships for undergraduate students majoring in Polymer Science. Most of these students enter the coatings or related polymer industries upon graduation. These scholarships are key to USM’s efforts to recruit the highest-achieving students into their Polymer program.

This year’s event had 352 attendees and featured 47 talks organized into seven sessions related to various aspects of surface coatings: waterborne, nanotube, bio based, corrosion, academia, additives and general.

“This year’s Symposium is our best year since 2001,” noted Dr. Robson Storey, USM professor and Symposium chair. “The Symposium is growing steadily.”

Plenary Speaker, Keynote Address and Sidney Lauren Memorial Lecture

The opening session commenced with plenary speaker, Kurt Olson, Fellow, Coatings Research and Development at PPG Industries who presented a talk entitled “Environmentally Friendly Coatings: Historical Perspectives and Future Outlook.”

“At the end of the day we a have a responsibility to make coatings that have the least environmental impact,” Olson said. “Sustainability, new functionality, light weighting, energy and heat resistance and corrosion protection are all driving R&D. We as a coatings community have made a lot of progress concerning environmental issues over the past decade, but there is still a lot to do.”

Key drivers for change in the industry include regulatory issues, total cost of paint and performance. “The collective innovations that we strive so hard to develop are a making a difference in order to affect true change, we must develop products that touch on several of these change drivers,” he stated. “New products that improve at least two of these drivers have a high probability of success.’

The plenary lecture was followed by keynote speaker, Dr. John Gilbert, senior vice president, R&D at Behr Process Corp., who presented “Recent Trends in the Architectural Coatings Industry.”

The architectural coatings industry has undergone great change over the last ten years. “Today’s paints and coatings have a much different raw material base, a different environmental profile and different properties,” Gilbert said. “These change have been brought about through a variety of influences including synthetic chemists, paint formulators, end-users and environmental regulations.”

According to Gilbert, over the past decade the architectural coatings industry has seen healthy innovation. “A few of the key drivers have been the conversion from oil-based to waterborne paint, the reduction of VOCs, removal of chemical concerns, the emergence of paint-and-primers in one products, the desire to provide improved film properties such as dirt pickup resistance and early rain resistance and the desire to provide easy-to-apply new looks,” he said. “Coatings formulation continues to be a field rich in innovation. As consumer tastes change, regulatory rules change and new raw materials become available, paint formulators will continue to use their expertise and creativity to produce new products.”

The fifth annual Sidney Lauren Memorial Lecture was presented by Kristen Blankenship of AGC Chemicals America, speaking on “Formulation and Performance Evaluation of Waterbased 2K Polyurethane Coatings for Industrial Applications.”

Performance, cost, and safety drive the coatings industry.  “Safer and environmentally friendly coatings continue to be a hot topic of discussion globally; however, the adoption of greener coating technologies is slow, especially in the U.S.,” said Blankenship.  “This could be attributed to many factors, but from the formulator’s perspective, performance is key.  Waterborne coatings have been used in architectural applications for decades, but typically these coatings are valued mostly for aesthetics, ease of use, and low cost.  The use of waterborne coatings in industrial applications, where higher performance is required, is still uncommon.”

Blankenship had conducted a study of two- component or 2K waterborne polyurethane coatings based on FEVE fluoropolymer resins.  This study focused on formulating with catalysts, which are uncommon in waterborne 2K coatings as compared to their widespread use in solventborne coatings.  The impact of catalysts on performance was explored.  The resulting data shows how they improve performance by favoring the isocyanate- polyol reaction over the isocyanate- water reaction.  Long- term weatherability (QUV-A and Xenon Arc) and corrosion resistance (Prohesion) were also tested.  The final results offer a comparison of performance between waterborne 2K coatings and solventborne 2K coatings.

Technology Showcase

In addition to the main technical program, the Waterborne Symposium also included a three-day Technology Showcase. Now in its 19th year, the sold-out showcase had 26 exhibitors who focused on emerging technologies, new materials, innovative services and equipment.

Student Poster Sessions/Awards

This year the Waterborne Symposium presented the Siltech Best Paper Innovation Award, the SSCT Best Student Paper Award and the Eastman Student Poster Awards.

USM students presented their research during the Poster Session. This year’s session included 20 student posters.

The Eastman Student Poster Award Undergraduate Recipients are William Blake Martin, for “Synthesis of Thiol-ene Hydrogel in Presence of Visible Light” and Rene Cardona for “Investigation of the Effect of POSS on the Melt Viscosity, Crystallization and Mechanical Properties of Polyphenylensesulfide and Polyetheretherketone.”

The Eastman Student Poster Award Graduate Recipients are Ramesh Ramakrishnan for “PEG Containing Thiol-ene Network Membranes: A Model System to Study the Effects of Cross-link Density on Free Volume and Gas Diffusivity,” Doug Amato for “Environmentally Friendly One-Pot Synthesis of Hairy Nanoparticles by Emulsion Thiol-ene and ATRP,” Brian Donovan for “Thiol-Trifluorovinyl Ether (Thiol-TFVE) Photochemistry: A New Route to Semifluorinated Materials” and Abagail Jentsch for “Utilizing Polymer-Chromophore Interactions Towards Optimizing Triplet-Triplet Annihilation in Solid-State Materials.”

The Student Best Paper Award sponsored by the SSCT went to Greg Curtzwiller for “Comparison of the Added Value for Corrosion Performance of Chemically Modified Multiwall Carbon Nanotube Epoxy-Amine Coating Systems on Steel Substrates”

PCI Magazine’s Award for Technical Excellence was given to Andrew Steward of Molecular REBAR Design, LLC for “Novel Industrial Coatings Developed Using Molecular REBAR.”

The Siltech Innovation Award was given to Luz Calle of NASA for “Environmentally Friendly Coating Technology for Autonomous Corrosion Control.”

Allison Robers and Dane Wesgeworth were the recipients of the Sidney Lauren Memorial Scholarship.

Expert Coatings Panel Discussion

For the third year, Dale Pritchett, publisher of Coatings World, moderated a panel discussion. This year’s panel was titled “Trends and Innovations in the Global Coatings Industry.” 

This year’s panel focused on the business and trends that impact this market. Attendees had the opportunity to hear first hand from major architectural coatings manufacturers on how their company succeeds in this dynamic market.

The panel was comprised of James Bodwell, senior principal scientist at Avery Dennison; Swagata Chakraborty, senior development manager at Berger Paints; Dennis Lay, vice president R&D at Rust-Oleum and Diane Stewart, senior scientist at DAP. The panel concluded with a Q&A session with the audience.

The 2017 Waterborne Symposium will be February 19-24 at the New Orleans Marriott on Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. 

2017 Call For Papers

The School of Polymers and High Performance Materials at The University of Southern Mississippi has issued a call for papers for presentation at the 44th Annual International Waterborne Symposium, February 19-24, 2017 in New Orleans. Papers should relate to new and emerging technologies related to materials, processes, production, characterization, application and markets in the field of surface coatings. All papers should be original and represent recent advances in coatings science and related disciplines. Title, abstract and author’s names (speaker’s name underlined) should be submitted by mail, fax or e-mail no later than Aug. 15 to School of Polymers and High Performance Materials, The University of Southern Mississippi, Box 10063, Hattiesburg, MS 39406-0063; 601-266-4475; Fax: 601- 266-6265; E-mail: waterborne@usm.edu; Web: www.psrc.usm.edu/waterborne.