Mexico. A group of researchers from the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP) has been developing an ecological water-based coating to protect metal structures.
However, due to the difficulty of subsisting on anticorrosive coatings for protection of metal structures by water-based systems, since by coating a metal surface with a water-based protective film, the latter will corrode the substrate before a polymer layer is formed, the group of researchers took on the challenge of making the base coatings effective.
The research team found that synthesizing polymer spheres of controlled size could quickly form a protective film before the water and electrolytes contained in it corroded the substrate. In this way, it was possible to increase the drying speed of the coating only by adjusting the diameter of the particles dispersed in the water.
To increase the impermeability of the paint, a vulcanized polymeric core was included within the particles, while an acrylic shell allowed to increase its adhesion to the metal substrate.
In order to further improve the protective capacity of the coating, they decided to add minuscule amounts of titanium dioxide nanotubes, synthesized by doctors Gerardo Ferrat Torres and José Antonio Toledo Antonio. However, the highly hydrophobic nature of these compounds made it extremely difficult to incorporate them into a water-based dispersion. The problem was solved in a very ingenious way: by anchoring the nanotubes to the adhesive shells of the polymeric particles.
The end result was the development of a 100% water-based coating, which quickly forms polymeric films that adhere strongly to metal surfaces and prevent the passage of water and electrolytes into the substrate, thus protecting metal structures against corrosion. The cost of the coating is lower than that of many solvent-based anticorrosive paints, without causing the serious health and environmental problems due to the emission of VOCs.
The development of these new environmentally friendly anticorrosive coatings was presented in the thesis "Study of the process of formation of water-based coating film", supported by Rosa Montesinos and directed by doctors Fernando Álvarez Ramírez and Flavio S. Vázquez Moreno. It is worth mentioning that Dr. Montesinos currently works as a researcher at Oxiteno, where she directs research projects, several of them aimed at scaling up new chemical products from the IMP.
Recently, the Mexican Institute of Industrial Protection (IMPI) granted the IMP the patent MX/a/2012/007272 "Synthesis procedure of a water-based polymer resin doped with titanium dioxide nanotubes with application as an anticorrosive coating", whose authors are Rosa del Carmen Montesinos Gómez, Nancy Romero Hernández, César Andrés Flores Sandoval, Fernando Álvarez Ramírez, Gerardo Ferrat Torres, José Antonio Toledo Antonio and Flavio Salvador Vázquez Moreno.
With information from the Mexican Petroleum Institute.
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