“The understanding of biomass polymerisation has advanced significantly“

For which type of application do you currently see the performance of bio-based coatings improving most?

Teemu Piesanen: The range of opportunities for bio-based coatings is vast – from plastic extrusion and fibre coatings to architectural and industrial paints. Suppliers offer a similarly wide range of technologies for use in these “bio” coatings – for example mass balance, bio-monomers and biomass.

All these technologies attract debate and involve compromise, whether on cost, performance, methodology or carbon footprint. Where we are starting to see progress is with the biomass technologies – typically costs are acceptable and, as many are derived from waste streams, the carbon footprint is usually good.

Until now, the limitation has been the technical performance which has restricted their use to applications with less demanding performance requirements.

Based on years of research and in-use experience, the understanding of biomass polymerisation has advanced significantly. This knowledge has, recently, enabled the development of binders with improved technical performance, so opening up a much wider range of coating applications to binders with biomass content.

What new sustainable components have you seen recently? What would be high on your wish list?

Piesanen: Many of the new raw materials offered are bio-based monomers of different kinds. Usually these are expensive and can have a higher CO2-footprint than their fossil-based relatives. So even if they can be described as “bio” they are not necessarily more sustainable.

By contrast, in Finland lot of research is done with polysaccharides derived from side streams of the forestry industry. This is one of Finland’s largest industries and represents a significant share of national GDP. 

For my wish list, I would like to see even more of these bio-based building blocks – not just at lab scale but available on an industrial scale also. I would make the same comment about monomers from recycled sources – for example styrene and methyl methaacrylate.

Supplies remain limited and costs are high although there is technology for recycling monomers, but upscaling is still needed. With recycled raw materials we could achieve more sustainability value.

We need these building blocks to be available at scale and at reasonable cost if we are to continue to improve the performance and extend the use of bio-based and sustainable coatings.

Event tip

Bio-based systems are also the focus of the EC Conference Bio-based and Water-based Coatings on November 14 and 15 in Berlin, Germany. At the conference, you will learn about the latest developments in bio-based and water-based coatings.