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Differences between China’s epoxy floor coating technologies and processes and those of currently advanced countries

2009-03-08View Original

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Epoxy flooring has been developing in China for as long as 15 years. As demand for it in the market grows, people’s understanding of the varieties, functions, and quality of epoxy resin flooring is also improving. The situation in which the self-leveling and coating techniques introduced from Japan dominated the market for over a decade has now changed significantly. Floor owners no longer consider merely a beautiful appearance to be sufficient when it comes to floor quality; today, they seek floors that combine aesthetics with functions such as environmental friendliness, weather resistance, durability, wear resistance, pressure resistance, temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, water resistance, and slip resistance. Such high standards of quality are difficult to meet by conventional epoxy floors, regardless of whether they use coating techniques or self-leveling processes. Nowadays, many applications are trying to use materials such as polyester, polyurea, and MMA as alternatives, but ideal results still cannot be achieved. Given the inherent properties of epoxy resins, they outperform other polymers in terms of meeting the comprehensive requirements of current owners; the key lies in the rationality of the formulation and the scientific nature of the manufacturing process. Unlike the applications of other polymers such as polyurea, polyurethane, and MMA, where the cross-linking methods and ingredient combinations are relatively simple, epoxy resins have many complex ways of curing. There is also a greater variety and complexity in terms of curing agents, and it is the advancement and scientific nature of these ingredients as well as the curing processes that reflect the true level of the epoxy resin industry. Just as China is now the world’s largest producer of epoxy resins, the price of epoxy resins produced in China differs by over 40% from that of similar-grade resins produced in Europe and the United States in the international market. Despite an excessive capacity for producing epoxy resins in China, the country still has to spend a large amount of foreign currency each year on importing large quantities of such resins at high prices from Europe and the United States, and this is because the different manufacturing processes result in significant differences in their premium performance characteristics. What’s more, almost all of the curing agent raw materials essential for epoxy resins in our country – fatty amines, polyether amines, and alicyclic amines – are imported. Furthermore, in terms of epoxy floor coating technologies, advanced countries in Europe, America – including Japan – have long adopted techniques such as sanding, shot blasting, as well as breathable materials and processes; yet the vast majority of floor coating material manufacturers and construction teams in our country are still unaware of these methods. In our country’s airports and factories, these processes and materials are essential due to specific requirements; even sand has to be imported. This is the real gap between our country’s epoxy flooring industry and that of more advanced countries. What’s worse, when these advanced materials and techniques first arrived in our country, some companies did not bother to understand the principles behind their composition, nor did they seek to comprehend the sophistication and scientific basis of these techniques. Instead, they tried to imitate them blindly, and some even focused on finding ways to cut corners and use inferior substitutes in order to reap unjust profits. It is because of such unscientific and opportunistic thinking patterns among some unscrupulous companies that our country’s epoxy flooring industry has been led down a path of shoddy production that goes against scientific principles, harming both others and itself from the very beginning. Based on the latest technical information regarding epoxy flooring systems from advanced countries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan, there is little difference between epoxy resins and the bisphenol A-type epoxies used in China’s flooring industry. As for curing agents, polyether amine or a mixture of polyether amine and alicyclic amines is predominantly used. The construction methods have mainly shifted to sanding or shot blasting, and the epoxy materials used are typically solvent-free, filler-free pure resin-based coatings or adhesives. Bisphenol A-type epoxy resin, combined with a certain proportion of AGE and appropriate additives, low-molecular-weight polyether amines such as Huntsman’s 230# and 511#, along with refined, color-stable NP and IP, as well as certain accelerators (amines), are used to create solvent-free, pure epoxy coatings or adhesives. These can be used as the base coat or intermediate coat for self-leveling floors, as well as as the intermediate coat, top coat, grout, sand mixture, or spray adhesive for sandblasted floors.

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