New anticorrosive technology based on zinc primaries developed

International. A new coating technology based on zinc primaries seeks to offer better corrosion protection for a variety of industries and applications, from offshore oil and gas platforms to wind turbines. 

The Hempel company developed the product under the Hempadur AvantGuard brand, which they claim is the result of an extensive Research and Development program, which was created specifically to solve a problem discovered in the company's laboratories in 2007: only one-third of the zinc was used in a primary epoxy zinc used for galvanic protection.

José Luna, Hempel's Americas Marketing Director, commented: "AvantGuard is perhaps the biggest change in anti-corrosion technology since zinc coatings were first introduced during the 1960s. The technology offers customers good anti-corrosion performance in a coating that has high mechanical strength." 

This technology uses hollow glass spheres and activates more zinc within the coating, ensuring a significantly higher galvanic effect than zinc primaries that do not possess the technology, which also allows the barrier effect and inhibition protection to occur, and thus combining the three protective effects into one.

In addition, the formulation improves the mechanical strength of the coating, which is essential for applications with, for example, extreme temperature fluctuations and humidity.