Radiation curing by LED technology for industrial wood flooring coatings
LED technology for UV curing of wood flooring coatings has a high potential to replace the conventional mercury vapour lamp in the future. It offers the possibility of making a product more sustainable over its entire life cycle.
In a recently published paper, the applicability of LED technology for industrial wood flooring coatings was investigated. The comparison of LED and mercury vapour lamps in terms of the radiation energy generated shows that the LED lamp is weaker. Nevertheless, the irradiation of the LED lamp at low belt speeds is sufficient to ensure crosslinking of UV coatings. From a selection of seven photoinitiators, two were identified that are suitable for use in LED coatings. It was also shown that these photoinitiators can be used in future in quantities close to the application.
LED technology suitable for industrial wood flooring coating
By using a suitable oxygen absorber, oxygen inhibition could be counteracted. This is a known challenge in LED curing. The formulations combining the two suitable photoinitiators and the determined oxygen absorber produced promising surface results. The application was similar to the industrial process on wood flooring. The results show that LED technology is suitable for industrial wood flooring coating. However, further development work is to follow, dealing with the optimisation of the coating components, the investigation of further LED lamps and the complete elimination of surface tackiness.
The study was conducted as a bachelor’s thesis by Melina Zernickel at Esslingen University of Applied Sciences. It is subject to a lock-up period until July 7, 2027.
