Emerald Performance Materials is showcasing several new technologies at Booth 2755. “The ACS is an excellent venue for us to make an impression on the entire industry and showcase our full range of products and latest developments to bring value to a wide range of architectural and industrial coatings,” said Julie Vaughn Biege, Vice President Marketing and Business Development. “Our full commercial and technical teams from across the company will be on hand to connect with existing customers, as well as meet new customers who are continuing to try to push the performance envelope or who are looking for some creative and value-added solutions to address specific issues.”

In particular, Emerald is featuring new developments surrounding high-performance resins and additives to solve common formulating challenges for “A Flawless Finish,” the booth theme this year. New innovations such as Lucida Colors™ IJ self-dispersed pigment dispersions, Masil^® Ultra SL1000 slip-mar silicone for printing/packaging, and Nychem^® 1561X604 latex are highlighted, plus Hypro^® 100% reactive liquid polymers for pipeline coatings, multifunctional epoxy resins and modifiers, defoamers and low-VOC coalescents for an expanding range of applications.

“Coalescents are additives that can deliver much more to coatings than just aiding in film formation; by creating a stronger, better coalesced film, the right coalescent has the potential to unlock next-level performance, enhancing properties such as gloss, scrub, block and freeze-thaw characteristics, which are crucial watersheds for elevating a paint or coating to a high-performance formulation.” said Wendy Herbst, Global Marketing Director for the K-FLEX^® line of benzoate coalescents and plasticizers.

Herbst continued, “The K-FLEX line has grown significantly over the last five years, based on successes with new products that have been specifically tailored for paints and coatings, such as K-FLEX 975P, K-FLEX 850S and K-FLEX 500P. These products have been optimized to enhance those key properties, which are especially important in interior applications. Our product development team has focused on expanding the range of applications and demonstrating superior performance and value that stand the test of time.”

According to Herbst, afocus at ACS will be new data showing how these materials are used in new areas. For example, Emerald now has four years' exposure using fence data on exterior coatings applications, highlighting weatherability and dirt pick-up resistance, and has expanded applications development for light industrial uses, where the K-FLEX products demonstrate excellent hardness development and corrosion resistance in salt fog.

Another of the Emerald business groups, CVC Thermoset Specialties, is showcasing a growing product line that includes a wide range of specialty epoxies to further enhance chemical resistance over standard LERs and a range of other modifiers. The business continues development of its Hypro line of reactive liquid polymers, which incorporate rubber properties into epoxies, acrylates, vinyl esters and polyesters for enhanced fracture toughness, low-temperature properties, resilience, interlaminar adhesion, peel adhesion, and thermal cycling. These properties have resulted in increasing demand for Hypro CTBN modifiers in many growing industrial segments, including pipeline and FBE coatings.

The business is also featuring ERISYS^® reactive modifiers and other formulating ingredients, such as Omicure^® urea catalysts to enhance durability, impact and chip resistance, critical needs for  industrial and automotive applications, and EPALLOY^® 7200 for rapid and low-temperature cure, tetrafunctional epoxies as polyfunctional aziridine replacements, and a range of materials  for companies seeking alternatives to bisphenol A.

“Emerald’s CVC Thermoset Specialties business focuses on delivering the key benefits of epoxy systems and making them better,” said Charles Zarnitz, Global Sales and Marketing Director for CVC. “Epoxies are a preferred platform in industrial finishes due to superior chemical resistance, flexibility and adhesion to metal surfaces. However, when unmodified, epoxies are also known to be brittle. This is where CVC’s specialty products and know-how come to play. For example, even in highly curved surfaces, such as pipeline coatings, incorporation of HyPox^® RK820, an RLP rubber-modified epoxy, can enhance impact and flexibility these properties, along with increased adhesion to steel and improved cathodic disbondment.”

Emerald Specialties Group has also focused on building off of the technology features at the last American Coatings Congress. The business group has been developing and expanding its line of specialty silicone technology and will showcase its newest product, Masil Ultra SL1000 modified silicone, a 0-VOC, water-based additive optimized to deliver enhanced slip/mar/scratch resistance for coatings and OPVs, particularly food packaging applications. (The product has broad indirect food contact clearances and is formulated free of ingredients on the California Proposition 65 list.)

“The Masil Ultra SL1000 line addresses key performance needs in coatings and other industries, exemplifying the absolute best performance possible with a silicone additive tailored specifically to the end use. In line with this, the new water-based slip-mar additive has been designed to eliminate issues with surface defects, gloss and surface hardness, while also meeting the extensive regulatory approvals for indirect food contact applications,” said Andrew Recker, R&D Director, Emerald Specialties.

In addition, new aqueous, self-dispersed LUCIDA COLORS IJ pigment dispersions from Emerald are resin and surfactant free, and provide superior stability, exceptional lightfastness and smaller particle size, making them ideal for inkjet applications.The Specialties business group will also feature Masil silicones, FOAM BLAST^® defoamers and Hilton Davis^® EC, 0-VOC and semitransparent dispersions.

An additional new product that Emerald is featuring at ACS is Nychem 1561X604, a medium-nitrile-level specialty emulsion, launched by the Emerald Specialty Polymers business group. The advanced technology behind Nychem 1561X604, based on butadiene, acrylonitrile and styrene, has been designed with low/no emulsifier levels. A high surface tension latex that exhibits low foam,  this polymer greatly enhances tensile strength while providing other key benefits such as high elongation, abrasion resistance and superior resistance to water, oil, grease and hydrocarbons, which are important in specialty paper and textile coatings applications.

“Helping our customers to meet their formulation goals is a core part of Emerald's commercial strategy, and that strategy is shaped by the continuous pursuit of innovative new technologies that exceed the existing bar for performance,” said Vaughn Biege. “We are really looking forward to engaging with the audience at ACS and discussing how the newest solutions we've developed can be paradigm-shifting technologies for many growing segments, overcoming the traditional formulation challenges that would otherwise sandbag end-use performance.”

Vaughn Biege continued, “In addition, in the past several years we have focused on increasing our capabilities for many of our product lines that are already important and well-known in the coatings space, and the ACS is an instrumental venue for us to continue communicating the value and distinction of those brands.”