Pigments are key ingredients in Coatings formulations.
Pigments provide two types of main benefits to any coating: aesthetics and functionality. Being very important the decorative aspect pigments offer, they are more than just color. They can increase the overall performance of the protecting color coating by enhancing its durability and increasing the protection of the substrate. Inorganic Pigments have been present in the chemical composition of Coatings for centuries e.g. Iron Oxides in their original natural form.
Emulsion Paints are much common as indoor and outdoor wall paint. Especially for outdoor applications excellent weather and alkali stability as well as high light fastness are absolutely necessary. Colouring with inorganic colour pigments or pigment preparations gives individual touch to emulsion paints by a wide colour range .
No matter whether epoxy systems for primer or acrylate and polyester resins for outdoor paintings are concerned in respect to light and weather stability inorganic pigments are first quality. However in a range of temperatures of >180° C the limited heat resistance of common iron oxides has to be considered.
If modern, environmental friendly coatings are concerned, powder paint is one of the best solutions. It is solvent free, eco efficient and danger of fire and explosion are much smaller than in case of solvent containing liquid paints.
UV hardening paint systems have become more and more important in the last few years. Very fast drying make high production speeds possible and thus allowing a much faster processing of the single components.
Water paints have gained in importance by the (total or partial) replacement of solvents and will become even more important in many fields in the next few years.
There are paint systems which have to be burned-in. Beside the highly burned-in industrial paints there are coil-coating systems and powder paints. In this case heat resistance of the pigments to be used have to be considered.