Milliken & Co. subsidiary SiVance, LLC recently introduced the SiVance C2010 resin, a new reactive silicone technology designed to create durable epoxy-silicone hybrid coating formulations.
This unique, high-performance material was designed to extend the flexibility and impact resistance of protective coatings used in harsh operating environments such as undersea drilling, hydraulic fracturing, and chemical manufacturing.
Compared to coatings made with competitive products, SiVance noted that hybrid formulations featuring the SiVance C2010 resin can enable formulators to help their customers avoid the cracking, delamination, and blistering that lead to corrosion and failure of metal pipes, tanks, and equipment.
“While epoxies for protective coatings have been enhanced over the years, they are approaching their limits,” said Jeff Jones, business development director at SiVance. “At the same time, requirements for today’s extremely demanding environments are escalating,” he added. “SiVance C2010 resin gives formulators a powerful new tool for extending the durability of epoxies under the harshest of conditions, helping end customers reduce maintenance, replacement costs, and downtime.”
Stands Up to Tough Conditions
Due to their brittle structure caused by a high crosslink density, epoxies are susceptible to cracking and delamination when exposed to heat, chemicals, and hot water. Replacing a portion of an epoxy coating system with the SiVance C2010 silicone resin, which is more flexible, thermally stable, and hydrophobic than epoxy, creates a hybrid that can better absorb stress from reverse impact and thermal shock, according to SiVance officials.
To facilitate the formulation of these hybrids, the SiVance C2010 resin uses a proprietary structure that makes it broadly compatible with aliphatic epoxies and aromatic epoxies, such as bisphenol-A, bisphenol-F, and phenol novolacs.
Coatings formulated with an epoxy-silicone hybrid offer increased durability in highly demanding applications, such as immersion coatings, tank linings, thermal insulation, and subsea coatings, according to SiVance officials. Industry processes that can benefit include oil and gas exploration and extraction, offshore and marine operations, and chemical manufacturing.
Value Added to Epoxy Coatings
Deep undersea drilling operations, for example, subject coatings to higher temperatures and pressures. SiVance said that laboratory tests conducted under these conditions showed that a bisphenol-A epoxy-silicone hybrid formulation made with its resin far surpassed a bisphenol-A epoxy formulation in flexibility and reverse impact performance.
These improvements in flexibility and impact resistance were achieved with only a minor decrease in other critical properties, the company said, including hardness and glass transition temperature. Additionally, the improvements had little to no impact on adhesion, according to SiVance.
Although organic modifiers and other reactive silicones provide similar flexibility upon curing, they lose this property more rapidly than the SiVance C2010 resin under exposure to demanding environmental extremes, according to the company.
The new resin is available globally in commercial quantities and is currently registered under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Other global approvals are in progress, SiVance said.
For more information, contact: SiVance, LLC, (864) 503-1173, millikenchemical.com/sivance