Trinseo’s Greg Welsch, Global Innovation Leader, and Don Ventresca, retired TS&D Specialist, contributed a technical paper titled “Multi-functional barrier coating systems created by multi-layer curtain coating” to Converting Quarterly. The paper discusses using functional coatings to provide critical performance characteristics in paper and paperboard applications.
An abstract of the paper can be found below:
“Functional coatings are applied to paper and paperboard substrates to provide resistance, or a barrier, against media such as oil and grease (OGR), water, water vapor (MVTR) and oxygen, for applications such as food packaging, food service and other non-food packaging. Typical functional barrier coatings can be created by applying a solid coating or extruded film, a solvent based-coating or a water-based coating to the paper substrate using various means of coating applicators. Today, there is increasing interest in developing recyclable and more sustainable approaches to producing these types of packages. This article focuses on water-based barrier coatings (WBBC) for OGR, water, MVTR and oxygen barrier performance, with the emphasis on creating coated systems that can achieve more than one barrier property, using multi-layer curtain coating (MLCC), in one application step. Curtain coating has emerged as the premier low-impact, contour coating application method for coated paper and paperboard. Significant research work to date and production experience on specialty papers and paperboard has focused on conventional coating techniques or single layer curtain coating. More recent work has shown that multi-layer curtain coating has many advantages over these other methods. One advantage of lower material cost is accomplished with the use of functional chemistry in confined layers where performance is optimized within the coating layered structure. This allows applying consecutive layers of different polymer types, in one step, to achieve the appropriate performance.”
To read the full paper, visit Converting Quarterly, page 53.
