Water-based fast-drying Bayhydur® quix ultra for kitchen cabinets
Wood furniture and kitchen cabinet manufacturers and their coating suppliers face increasing pressure from European and US customers to find low-emission coating and lacquer systems that can enhance their sustainability and lessen their impact on the environment.
For wooden furniture surfaces, a solvent-based coating system is currently the established technology. It offers high productivity thanks to short idling and quick drying times coupled with high performance, durability and finish quality. However, solvent-borne coatings and paints also bring high levels of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. Although waterborne coatings overcome this challenge, they still represent a hurdle in terms of productivity.
Our customer Sirca, a long-established Italy-based market leader in wood coatings, and their client FINVER, a panel component producer, were looking for a 2K waterborne coating system for high-performance lacquer surfaces fora kitchen furniture.
Our task was to provide Sirca with a low VOC, waterborne polyurethane coating resin that would enable FINVER to deliver high quality painted panels for custom kitchen furniture, reducing the environmental impact but without slowing production, lowering productivity, diminishing durability, or affecting the quality of the surface finish of the furniture.
“What impressed us at Sirca were the faster drying times and improved surface hardness that water-based Bayhydur® quix ultra brings compared to traditional hardeners. This enables customers to increase their productivity and lower VOC emissions, with no compromise on coating quality or performance.”
Production engineers and application developers in the wood coating and furniture industry are already adopting water-based coatings, but wider uptake of the technology is still deterred by worries about the slow drying speed of low VOC waterborne polyurethane resins compared to solvent-borne hardeners, and related concerns about reduced productivity and lower quality furniture surfaces.
Our partnership with Sirca and FINVER took on the challenge of delivering a low VOC waterborne two-component (2K) coating system that can help overcome the common concerns and accelerate the transition to water-based coatings. The solution had to avoid all compromises, safeguarding productivity with fast drying and simple drop-in application, while also delivering a high-performance, durable anti-scratch topcoat finish.
“When painting front panels for custom-colored kitchen cabinets, low volatile organic compound Bayhydur® quix ultra enabled us to apply fewer layers and achieve higher productivity thanks to the shorter drying times.“
In terms of application on the coating line, the 2k system based on Bayhydur® quix ultra water-based hardener enables fewer layers, a fast-drying time that ensures peak productivity, as well as VOC emission levels than can be lower than 97g per liter. The look, feel and performance of the high-quality surface finish is identical to solvent-based coatings. As a drop-in solution, Bayhydur® quix ultra is also easy to handle and requires no added investment or modification to production facilities.
“A low VOC waterborne solution like Bayhydur® quix helps us use less coating layers, saving us a complete pass-through. This increases productivity and reduces energy and material costs, while preserving the technical performance and aesthetics, and improving the environmental impact.”
The partnership with Sirca and FINVER demonstrates that our Bayhydur® quix ultra water-based coatings can boost sustainability across the value chain, with fast drying times, increased productivity, and high performance, all while lowering VOC emissions. Bayhydur® quix ultra helps overcome industry concerns about waterborne polyurethane coating systems, and helps accelerate the transition to a more sustainable coating technology.
