AkzoNobel has teamed up with universities to make coatings from the renewable resource hexa cellulose

organic chemists at the University of Groningen and akzo Nobel, a Dutch multinational company, have developed a process that uses light, oxygen and ultraviolet light to convert biomass into high-quality coatings. The process combines renewable resources with green chemistry and can replace petrochemical-based monosomes such as acrylics, which are currently used as the basis for coatings, resins and paints.
01, coatings are everywhere
coatings are everywhere, from paint on houses to protective layers on smartphone screens

. They protect the surface from scratches, weather changes or daily wear and tear. Most coatings are made up of polymers made up of a single system of acrylics, which produce more than 3.5 million tons of acrylics a year worldwide, all from petrochina.
02, Biomass
To make these coatings more sustainable, scientists at the University of Groningen, led by Professor Ben Feringa of Organic Chemistry, collaborated with scientists from Akzo Nobel, a paint manufacturer. "We wanted to use litopic cellulose as the starting material," said George Hermens, a doctoral student in feringa's research team. Hettopic cellulose, which accounts for 20 to 30 percent of the plant's woody part, is the most abundant raw material on Earth. Currently, it is mainly used as a solid fuel or for the production of biofuels.
Hermens explains: "Litopic cellulose can be cracked with acid to produce chemical structural units of acetaldehyde, but it needs to be modified to make it suitable for coating production. He used a method developed by their team to convert acetaldehyde into acrylic-like hydroxybutene. Chemical conversion uses only light, oxygen and simple catalysts and does not produce waste. The only by-product is methyl acetate, which replaces HCFCs in other processes.
part of
structure of hydroxybutene esters is similar to acrylates, but the refratic part of the molecule is the ring structure. "This means it's not as responsitive as acrylics, and the challenge is to further modify the molecule to produce useful polymers." This is achieved by adding different green or bio-based alcohols to hydroxybutylol esters to produce four different alkylbutylol endoester monogies.
these monomers can be converted into polymers and coatings by triggers and ultraviolet rays. The coating consists of a cross-linked polymer chain. By combining different monomers, we can obtain crosslinked polymers with different properties. For example, although all polymers can be coated with glass, a combination can also form a coating on plastic. By adding more rigid monosomes, a harder coating can be formed, which is comparable in performance to the coating on the car. In this way, these coatings are suitable for different purposes. Photo
04, product development
Hermens concludes: "We managed to use green chemical methods to make coatings from the renewable resources of hettopocin. "And the quality of our coatings is similar to that of current acrylic-based coatings." In two steps of the process, a patent application was filed with Akzo Nobel, the project's industrial partner. Hermens is now working on another building material derived from acetaldehyde to produce other types of polymer coatings.
the project was initiated by the Chemical Building Materials Alliance (ARC CBBC), a centre for advanced research at the National Centre for Public and Private Studies in the Netherlands, which develops new chemical processes and building materials for new chemical carriers and materials to achieve sustainable chemistry. Hermens director Ben Feringa is one of the founders of the center. ARC Bull Bear Certificate is a national program of partners from industry, academia and government. It involves three universities (University of Udrecht, University of Groningen and University of Erndehofen University of Science and Technology) and major industrial partners (AkzoNobel, Shell, Nuriyong and BASF), as well as the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy and the Netherlands Research Council (NWO). In this long-term partnership, universities and the chemical industry will work together to develop the green chemistry of the future.
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