Waste not, pay not

Citation

(1998), "Waste not, pay not", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 27 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.1998.12927fad.011

Waste not, pay not

Waste not, pay not

Keywords Enamel, Kemira, Recycling, Waste disposal

A fully recyclable storing enamel from Kemira Coatings is said to eliminate waste disposal costs by allowing overspray to be put back into production.

Ecopaint was developed in Switzerland by Unicolor AG and launched in 1993. It has since enjoyed considerable success in mainland Europe where paint waste disposal costs are high. To date it has had limited success in the UK, where waste disposal has been cheap.

However, waste disposal costs are now rising steadily in the UK. A trend of 300 per cent in five years is expected to continue or accelerate.

As a result Kemira is seeing a strengthening market in the UK, for the Ecopaint concept. Not only does it reportedly solve EPA compliance problems, but with disposal costs removed, payback on investment is looking increasingly attractive.

Ecopaint is a very low solvent (3 to 5 per cent), water-based paint which is applied in a water-wash spraybooth. Overspray is collected in the water and processed using a patented ultrafiltration system, supplied by Kemira, which concentrates it into re-usable paint, returning clean water to the spray booth.

Reclamation is usually better carried out in batches rather than as a continuous process, making the technique adaptable to multi-colour environments. Alternatively, all colours can be processed together and the reclaimed paint used as an undercoat. Or the technique may simply be used to concentrate the waste, to lower the cost of disposal.

According to Kemira applied coatings require only a short flash off time, and can be stoved in either convection or infrared ovens using normal stoving schedules. Force dry materials are also available. Surface properties include corrosion resistance, and performance at least equals that of solvent-based coatings.

One user painting over a million square metres of steel a year reports a better quality finish with 96 per cent reduction in solvent emissions, paint waste disposal reduced from 80 tons a year to nil, denaturing and coagulation chemicals reduced from 20 tons to nil, and paint savings of 35 per cent. Total application costs are more than halved, and operators enjoy a clean, odour free working environment.

Kemira Coatings is sole distributor of Ecopaint and the ultrafiltration equipment in the UK, and can supply the paint in all BS 4800 and RAL colours. The company predicts that the main markets for the paint will be in shelving, racking and office furniture, and is seeing particular interest from drum manufacturers, in any case faced with re-engineering their coating processes to meet EPA limits.

For further details contact Kemira Coatings Limited. Tel: +44 (0) 121 525 5665; Fax: +44 (0) 121 553 2787.