EC Conference Protective & Fire-retardant Coatings 2023

Intumescent coatings are a key element of passive fire protection for steel structures and other substrates like wood and textiles. Recent trends in the industry aim at developing more sustainable and efficient intumescent coatings.
Melamine-free coatings avoid the use of potentially hazardous melamine compounds, while lower coating thickness reduces the amounts of materials required. Both trends address environmental and economic concerns but also pose challenges regarding fire performance and durability.
Battery coatings for e-mobility are another emerging field of application for intumescent coatings. They protect lithium-ion battery cells from overheating and fire. This new segment is driving innovation in coating materials and application methods suitable for industrial production processes.
This presentation highlights recent developments in melamine-free coatings, thin-film intumescent coatings, and battery coatings. It explores the potential benefits and limitations of these new coating systems and discusses challenges for future innovation in passive fire protection. Overall, the trends towards more sustainable and efficient intumescent coatings will shape the future of fire safety in construction industry and battery safety.

Offshore Wind Turbines are constantly exposed to wind, water and salt. The protection of the steel structures is guaranteed by high-performance coating systems. The application of these liquid coating materials is associated with enormous effort due to environmental conditions and quality monitoring in the coating process. With the development of a foil coating system, the demands on technical hall equipment can be reduced considerably. For example, there is no need for costly ventilation systems or explosion-proof areas. The development of an automated application system is in the pipeline. In combination with the foil coating system, the need for quality monitoring is significantly reduced. Moreover, fewer employees will be needed to work in hazardous areas.

A ready-to-use paint is a mixture of individual raw materials. Do these different raw materials/additives influence each other? Are there additive combinations with synergy effects, especially for functional, water-borne protective coatings? Choosing the right raw materials is always crucial. The presentation uses a golden triangle to describe the use of selected additives in water-based protective coatings.

The industry does not adequately address corrosion resistance and integrity related pain points associated with high surface temperatures from equipment or flaring, terminations on three sided beams and reduced coatbacks, areas subject to water ponding / immersion, hazardous materials such as boron containing compounds, making repairs simpler. Image if one solution could robustly be applied to all these pain points and requirements in one simple coat.

Current and upcoming regulations are tighten the options for protective or thermal resistant coatings. With a toolbox based on silicone chemistry combined with novel hardeners, efficient cobinders and functional fillers it is possible to bring back more options for durable and sustainable coatings by using different curing mechansim that state-of-the-art 2pack products. Multiporpose raw materials allow by reducing complexicity in logistics the use in thermal resistant or protective application areas.

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There is no doubt that one of the benefits of intumescent coatings, compared to other passive fire protection technologies, is the ability to maintain aesthetics of steel structures they are aimed to protect. Selection of ingredients for their formulation is of course crucial to obtain the desired fire resistance, and binder can strongly influence the performances as the key intumescent package (spumific, carbonific and catalyst). The binder provides not only the application properties of the coating and the adhesion to substrate, but it also strongly influences the durability of the system and char formation. We propose state-of-the-art review of binder chemistries that can be used for cellulosic-fire protection

With the global activities of the automotive industry to change from classic combustion engines to electric drive units, the need for fire safety in EVs and especially their battery cases has certainly reached a new momentum.

In case of a thermal runaway of a lithium ion battery pack the emerging fire shall be encapsuled in the case for a certain period of time to ensure the safe exit of the passengers from the car.

For battery housings new standards may require a complex housing design to withstand long exposure times to high heat while maintaining structural integrity. The addition of mineral based heat shields, e.g. mica based plates, under the battery cover is a common approach but this increases the complexity of a battery design and its assembly.

A newly development class of flame retardant fillers enables to provide thermosets with an integral heat barrier effect caused by ceramification of the polymer phase while maintaining a solid mechanical stability even after exposure times of 30 minutes to heat flux at 1000 °C. Theses new fillers can be used either as a protective coating on metal based housings or within a polymer based battery housing itself.

For heat barrier formulations, parameters like thermal conductivity, viscosity, mechanical and flame retardancy properties are discussed.

Fire-retardant coatings have demonstrated effective fire protection for various materials, ranging from flammable polymeric foam and wood to nonflammable steel. However, balance between their manufacturing process, fire performance and cost effectiveness has significantly impeded their real-world applications. Using one step and solvent free process, we have modified commercial epoxy resin to incorporate phosphonate moieties, and to develop inherently flame retardant vitrimers. The application of the vitrimer thermoset as transparent fire protective coating on wood samples were explored. Due to the presence of phosphorus in the resin structure, the thermoset material exhibited excellent flame retardancy in varied fire tests. Fire tests of coated wood samples confirmed their excellent fire performance via intumescent mechanism. In addition to fire safe coating application, the material exhibited self-healing properties. The covalent incorporation of phosphonate moieties in the thermoset matrix introduces sufficient dynamic P-O ester bonds, and promotes the exchange of network crosslinks under moderate heating condition, resulting in scratch reparability. We believe that such fire safe vitrimers could also find use in fiber reinforced composites, textile coatings, and compatible polymer blends.