Speaker Tour – Vancouver BC: EPS

Bio: Dr. Robert Sandoval is a R&D Technical Manager at EPS, leading the Industrial and Construction coatings group.  He earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2005 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University in 2010, focusing in polymer physics and engineering.  Dr. Sandoval spent four years at Dow Chemical before joining EPS in 2014.  His industrial research has focused on mixing and emulsification technologies and coating formulations and testing.  His technical contributions have helped to commercially launch several platform technologies at EPS, including new high gloss architectural resins, interior & exterior flat through semi-gloss resins, and roof coatings.

Abstract: Adhesion to a substrate is a key fundamental property for most classes of coatings.  Unless one is designing a removable coating, high adhesion is typically desired.  However, due to the wide range of substrates that exist, designing a single resin and coating formulation that adheres to the multitude of surfaces that an end user may coat (while maintaining other performance properties) is challenging.  Additionally, as the coatings industry converts more to waterborne technologies, strategies that were once used to improve adhesion are no longer an option.  In this talk, an overview of common substrates and strategies that have been employed to adhere to them will be presented.  For example, low surface energy substrates such as thermoplastic olefin (TPO), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and others are notoriously difficult to adhere to due to their lack of chemical functionality to improve adhesion and typically require a solvent-based (i.e., high VOC) solution.  Data will be presented showing how newly developed waterborne acrylic resins and their coatings formulation can impact, and in the case of resin choice, dramatically improve adhesion, especially to metal, TPO, asphalt, and other hard-to-stick-to surfaces