Sean Milmo, European Correspondent01.04.18
For Europe’s coatings industry, like many other manufacturing sectors in the region, a key objective is sustainability so that the sector sharply reduces its CO2 emissions by switching to low carbon materials with a minimum carbon footprint and helps to conserve resources through reuse and recycling of products and their ingredients.
Also it wants to embrace the latest technologies so that it continues to be a leading force in innovation and product quality in the global coatings market.
Recent results and analysis of major research projects, mostly state or European Union-funded, in sectors like coatings and their raw materials, have indicated that achieving sustainability and advanced technology objectives could be a long haul. It is especially a big challenge for coatings and raw materials producers who are small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources.
The main problem – pinpointed by groups of experts advising the European Commission, the EU executive, and national governments –has been what has been dubbed the “Valley of Death.” This is the space in R&D projects between the achievement of a prototype and the later stages needed for its commercialization. Because of a lack of post-prototype evidence of market potential, developers have difficulties in attracting finance and other assistance to help to bring their innovations to the marketplace.
The EU and national governments have tried to resolve the problem of lack of money by extending the availability of their research funds from the prototype stage – classified as technology readiness level 4 – to TRL 7, which is the stage for demonstrating a product in an operational environment but two stages short of that needed for full-scale production readiness.
In a report issued in October, a high level group (HLG) of experts concluded that insufficient technological support for SMEs was causing a slower uptake of nanotechnologies and advanced materials, including coatings. It recommended to the European Commission the creation of a network of “innovation hubs.” These would provide facilities for developers to characterise materials and model their production engineering and scale-ups and gain access to pilot plants for demonstrating new products and their manufacturing processes.
However, for sectors like coatings there are other problems besides the low availability of pilot facilities and absence of engineering expertise. These include the high cost of renewable and other sustainable materials and disjointed value chains which hamper the necessity for close collaboration between coatings producers and their suppliers in the development of, for example, innovative raw materials.
These weaknesses were highlighted in the outcome of a EU-funded project on the development of biosolvents with the main outlet being the coatings sector. The three-year scheme, called ECOBIOFOR which was completed late last year, was one of the biggest, European cross-border research schemes in coatings because of the large numbers of people represented by its participants. These included two coatings associations, Europe’s main coatings trade body – the European Council of the Paint, Printing Ink and Artists’ Colours Industry – and PROCOAT of Italy, and three biotech associations in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland.
The three manufacturers in the project consisted of a French solvents producer and two coatings SMEs from Spain and France. Also there were three research and technological development (RTD) specialists, headed by Tecnalia of Spain and an advisory board of green raw material suppliers.
ECOBIOFOR developed three different bio-based solvents – a bio-ethyl acetate produced from bio-ethanol by esterification, two butyl bio-acetates, made from bio-butanol by esterification and a bio-butyl glycol produced from bio-butanol. None have so far been commercialized.
The problems confronting the projects team and the need for further research were detailed in a recently published final results report. “The economics of these new synthesizing routes require a careful study,” it said. “Commercially produced quantities should (be produced) at the similar level of solvents derived from petrochemicals. This is a challenge indeed, especially with today’s low oil prices. There certainly is a lot to do to optimize the processes developed in the project before the biomass route holds a promising future.”
A barrier to commercialization was the reluctance of solvents producers, biotech companies and coatings producers to move into bio-solvent manufacture.
“The main challenge is the identification of industry partners who are willing to switch from alcohols to bio-alcohols in their solvent production,” said Idoia Etxeberria of Tecnalia, the project co-ordinator. The paint industry does not have the capacity or business interest to start solvent production. But it would be very interested to apply these bio-solvents if available in sufficient quantities and at a competitive price.”
Gradually a commercialization infrastructure of the sort recommended by the European Commission’s advisors is beginning to emerge, at least in northern Europe.
In Finland, VTT Research Centre, one of the country’s main research institutes, has pilot plants available for innovators in coatings and related applications in order to bridge the gap between laboratory-scale development and commercial-scale production.
“Our pilot plant for dispersions and foam coatings is small scale but it is large enough to enable innovators to demonstrate their coatings products on a range of substrates including plastics,” explained Ulla Forsstroem, a principal scientist at VTT. “The scheme has been a success in helping products progress to commercialisation.”
In the UK the state-owned Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) provides at similar service from its base at Teesside in northeast England with facilities covering prototyping, demonstration and scale-up, including process modelling and simulation derived from pilot plant production.
CPI provided a platform for the Scottish company CelluComp for the development of a nano cellulose rheology modifier which has since been used by several coatings formulators.
“Working with CPI has enabled us to reduce the risk of moving from lab to production scale by utilizing CPI’s process facilities and expertise before making a significant capital investment in our own facility,” said Eric Whale, CelluComp’s co-founder.
As SMEs start to make use of the facilities at open-access research centers, larger coatings producers and other raw material and additive suppliers are expanding into new levels of efficiency in their research activities to widen the gap between themselves and their smaller competitors.
The German-based speciality chemicals company Evonik has opened a fully automated robot-manned plant for the high-throughput testing of an average of 120 coatings formulations a day. Each formulation can consist of up to 10,000 combinations of hardeners, binding agents, pigments and additives.
The plant consists of 52 elements which are connected by a rail system transporting containers and substrates through all parts of the facility. This is the sort of equipment and connectivity which even state-owned innovation hubs are unlikely to able to afford – at least for some time.
Also it wants to embrace the latest technologies so that it continues to be a leading force in innovation and product quality in the global coatings market.
Recent results and analysis of major research projects, mostly state or European Union-funded, in sectors like coatings and their raw materials, have indicated that achieving sustainability and advanced technology objectives could be a long haul. It is especially a big challenge for coatings and raw materials producers who are small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) with limited resources.
The main problem – pinpointed by groups of experts advising the European Commission, the EU executive, and national governments –has been what has been dubbed the “Valley of Death.” This is the space in R&D projects between the achievement of a prototype and the later stages needed for its commercialization. Because of a lack of post-prototype evidence of market potential, developers have difficulties in attracting finance and other assistance to help to bring their innovations to the marketplace.
The EU and national governments have tried to resolve the problem of lack of money by extending the availability of their research funds from the prototype stage – classified as technology readiness level 4 – to TRL 7, which is the stage for demonstrating a product in an operational environment but two stages short of that needed for full-scale production readiness.
In a report issued in October, a high level group (HLG) of experts concluded that insufficient technological support for SMEs was causing a slower uptake of nanotechnologies and advanced materials, including coatings. It recommended to the European Commission the creation of a network of “innovation hubs.” These would provide facilities for developers to characterise materials and model their production engineering and scale-ups and gain access to pilot plants for demonstrating new products and their manufacturing processes.
However, for sectors like coatings there are other problems besides the low availability of pilot facilities and absence of engineering expertise. These include the high cost of renewable and other sustainable materials and disjointed value chains which hamper the necessity for close collaboration between coatings producers and their suppliers in the development of, for example, innovative raw materials.
These weaknesses were highlighted in the outcome of a EU-funded project on the development of biosolvents with the main outlet being the coatings sector. The three-year scheme, called ECOBIOFOR which was completed late last year, was one of the biggest, European cross-border research schemes in coatings because of the large numbers of people represented by its participants. These included two coatings associations, Europe’s main coatings trade body – the European Council of the Paint, Printing Ink and Artists’ Colours Industry – and PROCOAT of Italy, and three biotech associations in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland.
The three manufacturers in the project consisted of a French solvents producer and two coatings SMEs from Spain and France. Also there were three research and technological development (RTD) specialists, headed by Tecnalia of Spain and an advisory board of green raw material suppliers.
ECOBIOFOR developed three different bio-based solvents – a bio-ethyl acetate produced from bio-ethanol by esterification, two butyl bio-acetates, made from bio-butanol by esterification and a bio-butyl glycol produced from bio-butanol. None have so far been commercialized.
The problems confronting the projects team and the need for further research were detailed in a recently published final results report. “The economics of these new synthesizing routes require a careful study,” it said. “Commercially produced quantities should (be produced) at the similar level of solvents derived from petrochemicals. This is a challenge indeed, especially with today’s low oil prices. There certainly is a lot to do to optimize the processes developed in the project before the biomass route holds a promising future.”
A barrier to commercialization was the reluctance of solvents producers, biotech companies and coatings producers to move into bio-solvent manufacture.
“The main challenge is the identification of industry partners who are willing to switch from alcohols to bio-alcohols in their solvent production,” said Idoia Etxeberria of Tecnalia, the project co-ordinator. The paint industry does not have the capacity or business interest to start solvent production. But it would be very interested to apply these bio-solvents if available in sufficient quantities and at a competitive price.”
Gradually a commercialization infrastructure of the sort recommended by the European Commission’s advisors is beginning to emerge, at least in northern Europe.
In Finland, VTT Research Centre, one of the country’s main research institutes, has pilot plants available for innovators in coatings and related applications in order to bridge the gap between laboratory-scale development and commercial-scale production.
“Our pilot plant for dispersions and foam coatings is small scale but it is large enough to enable innovators to demonstrate their coatings products on a range of substrates including plastics,” explained Ulla Forsstroem, a principal scientist at VTT. “The scheme has been a success in helping products progress to commercialisation.”
In the UK the state-owned Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) provides at similar service from its base at Teesside in northeast England with facilities covering prototyping, demonstration and scale-up, including process modelling and simulation derived from pilot plant production.
CPI provided a platform for the Scottish company CelluComp for the development of a nano cellulose rheology modifier which has since been used by several coatings formulators.
“Working with CPI has enabled us to reduce the risk of moving from lab to production scale by utilizing CPI’s process facilities and expertise before making a significant capital investment in our own facility,” said Eric Whale, CelluComp’s co-founder.
As SMEs start to make use of the facilities at open-access research centers, larger coatings producers and other raw material and additive suppliers are expanding into new levels of efficiency in their research activities to widen the gap between themselves and their smaller competitors.
The German-based speciality chemicals company Evonik has opened a fully automated robot-manned plant for the high-throughput testing of an average of 120 coatings formulations a day. Each formulation can consist of up to 10,000 combinations of hardeners, binding agents, pigments and additives.
The plant consists of 52 elements which are connected by a rail system transporting containers and substrates through all parts of the facility. This is the sort of equipment and connectivity which even state-owned innovation hubs are unlikely to able to afford – at least for some time.
