The Waterborne Symposium

Abstract
Oxidatively-cured materials such as alkyds and other unsaturated oils are traditionally used for solvent borne enamels and stains, which are commonly cured with cobalt carboxylate catalysts.  While many alkyds are made using sustainable and bio-renewable feedstocks, high solvent requirements and toxic catalysts offset many of the environmental benefits.
In this work, the effects of high-performance cobalt-free catalysts were studied in low VOC waterborne alkyd coatings and benchmarked versus cobalt carboxylates. Results were also compared to water borne acrylic coatings and resins.  Significant improvements in performance were notated in many performance criteria, including corrosion resistance, resistance to UV degradation, abrasion resistance, and others.
Instrumental techniques such as FTIR and GC/MS were utilized to investigate the differences in the composition of the resulting crosslinked films to increase understanding for how the choice of catalyst affects the oxidative curing pathway.