Flow Adsorption Microcalorimetry & Its Application To The Paint & Pigment Industries
Let's discuss the techniques that center around the measurement of adsorption onto and desorption from surfaces.
Finished coatings that protect surfaces often represent the end of a long process of design and testing. In use, these products provide the surface finish, which, apart from being visible, also acts as the system boundary, ideally closing it off or protecting it from aspects of the environment. So it is ironic that the coatings industry uses open system or 'flow-through' instrumentation to help understand surface chemical phenomena associated with pigments, fillers, additives, and protection.
This article discusses the techniques that center around the measurement of adsorption onto and desorption from surfaces. A new instrument, developed to make these measurements, is called a flow microcalorimeter (FMC). It is an ultrasensitive flow-through microcalorimeter designed to measure the small energies associated with preferential sorption of molecules onto (or off) surfaces and the number of molecules involved in such interactions, all in one automated experiment.