Sustainable emulsion polymers - UAE biomass balance

Sustainability at Intercol is an important pilar of our future. VAE is one of our major technologies that already enables us to eliminate the use of plasticisers By selecting the right VAE grades we manage to minimze the need of formulations and complex coatings & adhesive compounds.

VAE water soluble, and enabling water resistance of bio-polymers

VAE is standard a water-soluble, thermoplastic polymer, enabling recycling and decomposing of composite or assembled materials. Though, VAE offers more water resistancy than many biopolymers like starch and therefor can be used to increase tensile strength, ductility and water resistant of biopolymers.

Furthermore, some UAE grades have already been proven not to effect compostability of assembled products.

Applications

Our compounds are already used in many applications, such as:

• (Wall) coatings (mainly mineral walls, like stone)
• Adhesives in packaging, paper and wood industry
• Carpet applications (backing)
• Textiles and nonwovens (e.g. fibre bonding)

Very low VOC values

Many of our VAE compounds help our customers to use labels such as "Nordic Swan", "GUT carpet", "Low VOC paint, " and other ecological and sustainable initiatives. Plasticizer free and biocide free are available options.

Properties

By making the right compounds, VAE and PVAC adhesives can have the right properties for your applicaiton:

• Thermoplastic behaviour
• Water soluble or -
  • Water resistant (wash resistance for textiles, D3 or D4 for wood applications)
• Adhesion and release properties
• Scrub resistance
• Colour stability for coatings (UV resistance)
• Membrane properties (wall coatings)

Biobased by massbalance

UAE production is practically a very efficient chemical process. This efficient process is reached due to the scale of prodution, while produced with main raw materials as bio-acetic-acid and ethylene, these giantic feed stocks are efficiently processed in the supply chain. In order to replace the fossil feedstock with biobased feedstock,,, it is by far, most efficient to blend biobased raw materials into the feedstock. Hence, it would increase CO2 footprint massively if this feedstock would be based on biobased products, the availability of available biobased raw materials is to low and the supply chain not stable for large implementation. Still, UAE is available as "biobased by massbalance" product. This technology is mainly driven by the availability of biobased Acetic acid. Theoretically, if there is enough biobased acetic acid and bio-ethylene available, VAE could be 100% biobased in the future.