BIOCOAT

As sustainability becomes more important to consumers and European regulations tighten, fossil-based raw materials face growing pressure. The coating industry is responding by reducing VOC emissions through water-based alternatives and seeking eco-friendly options. 

Despite broad support for bio-based coatings, their adoption is slow due to misconceptions about their performance, lack of expertise in application, and challenges in formulation. New bio-based materials offer promising potential, sometimes even surpassing fossil-based alternatives, but developers face complex, costly development processes and a lack of one-to-one chemical replacements. Furthermore, international research focuses more on raw materials than on usable coating formulations.

The BioCoat project aims to accelerate the transition to bio-based coatings based on industrially available bio-building blocks by providing coating companies with knowledge about the formulation, application, performance and applications of bio-based coatings. 

Various tools are being developed for this purpose:

• A white paper will provide them with an overview of the applicability of market-ready organic building blocks and the development process to integrate them into their own product range: a bio-based coating, the application or the integration in an end product.
• The project will follow the development path of four "target formulations" (polyurethane (PU), polylactic acid (PLA), acrylic and epoxy) to demonstrate the transition to a high-quality bio-based alternative in practice. This knowledge base and insights can serve as a starting point for companies to accelerate the application of bio-based coatings for their own markets.
• A coating application will show how coating companies using traditional techniques (squeegee coating, impregnation, spray coating, dip coating or flow coating) can correctly process and apply bio-based coatings to textiles, plastics, composites and metals. Guidelines provide them with insight into the impact on their production process and the required developments and investments.
• Hands-on workshops, demonstrators, white paper, various publications and presentations are geared to the absorption capacity, knowledge level and role of companies in the value chain. The knowledge transfer will encourage companies to accelerate their innovation trajectory.