When environmental protection requires printers to implement strict environmental goals, there is a chain reaction in all aspects of the supply of raw materials throughout the printing industry. In order to eliminate the VOCs released by the solvent-based system, that is, to meet the EPA (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) requirements for reducing or eliminating V0Css, printers began to seek new technologies.

For ink formulators, one possibility is to develop a water-based system that can reduce V0Cs. Now that ink painting has been improved, it has had a major impact on many areas of the printing industry, especially for flexo printing.

Inks will continue to grow. The future development of ink painting depends on the orientation of the EPA; it depends on whether the printer's existing incineration, absorption, and disposal control equipment depreciates and shifts to water-based printing; it depends on the ink-and-wash manufacturers to further improve the ink-and-wash performance in order to gain more market share.

Water-based ink market application

Ink and wash have had a huge impact on the flexible packaging market. According to NAPIM USA Industry's 1999 annual report, water-based flexographic inks accounted for 37% of the packaging market. Inkjets already have a particular huge market, such as the absolute advantage of the narrow-band label printing process. Other applications include water-based flexographic printing of folding cardboard, grocery bags, merchandise storage bags, multi-layer paper bags, corrugated cardboard, and envelopes. Just as Mr. Darryl Sagraves, Manager of Technical Marketing at Sun Chemicals, once pointed out: The application of ink ink has an absolute advantage in these “easy-to-get markets” and will have more significant growth.

With the rapid growth of thin-film applications, there is also an opportunity for ink-jet printing on composite films. Today's inks are ideally suited for thin film printing processes due to their versatility and good printability. Because inks have protective properties for composite film structures, and the performance of water-based composite adhesives is equivalent to or even exceeds the corresponding solvent-based ones, we can expect that inks will have a real growth in composite packaging printing. When the incineration equipment that the composite packaging printer has invested in needs to be updated, the investment in the ink printing process equipment will be considered.

Ink and wash ink has entered the gravure printing market, although little progress has been made. The 1999 NAPIM data showed that water-based gravure inks accounted for 5% of the packaging market share, such as the gravure market profits of traditional gift wrapping and folding cartons. However, the gravure market, such as beverages and clean cartons, has not been truly welcomed.

Ink printing and rotary gravure have been successfully developed in many applications. After ten years of efforts, ink has entered many areas where solvent ink has been used, but there are still some limitations in the replacement process resulting in ink application performance owed Good, such as the use of non-porous substrates and rotogravure. Recently, ink and wash inks have also entered the folded cardboard (box) market, which is dominated by gravure and offset printing.

It is foreseeable that, except for certain specific markets, ink can be applied to almost all areas where solvent inks are used today, and inks have great potential for growth.

Ink and Wash Technology Status

Through nearly 10 years to 15 years of technical improvement, the ink-and-wash system has successfully solved most of the original difficulties, such as difficult to use, ink storage, substrate limitations, corona treatment and surface tension, and a new generation of ink. The initial disadvantage has changed to an advantage, gradually growing and maturing. Its advantages are mainly manifested in:

· Ink ink has environmental and safety advantages. In many paper products, ink printing can be designed as low VOCs or zero V0Cs.

·Ink ink has the advantages of stability and low flammability. Ink due to the low volatility of water to make it have a better viscosity stability

· The new generation of water-based products is easier to clean than solvent systems. The use of soapy water or weakly alkaline washing liquids can complete the cleaning of the components of the printing press, thereby increasing the production efficiency.

The ink-and-wash manufacturers have overcome most of the difficulties that existed previously in the ink-and-wash system and are actively working to resolve the existing difficulties. The difficulty in the application of ink-jet technology is:

• Drying time is still the most important issue in ink applications. Unless the press is equipped with enough drying equipment, the printing speed will be affected. This is also the most important factor affecting the speed of the ink-washing process to replace solvent inks.

· The use of ink in alkaline solutions has limited the use of ink in highly magnetic environments

· Ink applications on frozen food packaging still do not have the solvent ink resistance, although the distance is rapidly shortened

• Due to the high surface free energy of the water component in the ink, the ink is difficult to wet and print on many substrates.

The future development of ink painting

The current state of the application and technology of ink painting shows that to gain greater market share, further improvement of the performance of ink and wash makes it easier to use the most important topics.

The progress of ink-ink technology is gradually accepted by the flexographic printing market. This is mainly due to the fact that ink ink has been surpassing solvent-ink systems for many years and has advantages in ease of use and simple printing. Nowadays, when the flexographic industry compares and selects ink or solvent inks; confidence in ink has risen so that more printing work has been done by aqueous flexo printing. Recently in Europe and North America, product innovation has been driven primarily by meeting user requirements. The specific requirements for ease of use come from users, which will also be the driving force for new product development. The current performance requirements of ink users are:

· PH stable ink system, the ink manufacturing industry must develop a stable PH value in the printing process, that is no need to detect and adjust the PH value during printing.

· Re-dissolvability is another important area of ​​research where the resin tends to cure during the volatilization of amines, even on the plate. Recently, ink manufacturers have improved the properties of the resin to make it more soluble, which means that the printing system can be operated longer before cleaning, ie, the throughput is increased.

·Ink applications require continuous improvement in the application performance of polyethylene substrates

· Alkali resistance of ink printing and packaging, and application in frozen food packaging. The ink-and-wash manufacturing industry is expected to increase the surface resistance of ink-and-ink printing products to make more products water-based, especially in terms of oil resistance, grease resistance, and better heat and freezing resistance.

Environmental orientation will also be the key to the future profitability of ink painting

Whether or not ink painting can enter another climax in the future market, the ink and wash manufacturing industry regards government initiatives as the ultimate driving force. The EPA has always demanded that the final zero emission of V0Cs will mean for printers that the need to gradually reduce the release of V0Cs will eventually promote the use of ink. At this stage, there are pressures from various sources that environmental issues will be further noticed. In order to achieve increasingly stringent environmental management goals, printers are always looking for new ways of solvent ink printing operations to meet government regulations. The current focus of the printing industry is on enhancing the handling of emissions from solvent ink printing. The usual practice is to use "incinerators" to absorb and incinerate VOCs. Others are more creative in the treatment of microorganisms or bacteria that use V0Cs as their food. . All of these methods rely on the efficient absorption of transported VOCs into systems that can be neutralized, or incinerated or absorbed by microorganisms.

Although the environmental protection department still does not have a thorough and detailed development plan, it only continues to strengthen guidance and management. However, we believe that the strong guidance of environmental protection will have a significant impact on the final transition to ink and wash.

Ultimately, the government's management will be substantially strengthened. It depends on the stringency of the air cleaning law and its implementation, but there is only one goal to strengthen enforcement, namely zero emissions of V0Cs.

Although water-based inks have gained a significant market share in certain packaging fields, it remains to be seen whether they can enter other packaging areas in the future. In short, under the joint efforts of related industries, ink suppliers will provide better ink and film, more hydrophilic film surfaces, and printer manufacturers will create better drying equipment for water-based systems. Continuous growth provides a very viable path for printers to follow the path of low VOCs. In response, Mr. Wishar, Minister of Printing Scientific and Cooperative Services, had concluded that lead-based paint and asbestos were good products in a certain period, and we still hope that their alternatives will have their advantages. However, we have decided that because Environmental safety benefits from new products. If new products do not have those quality advantages we still have to use them. This indicates the future fate of solvent-based packaging inks, that is, it is possible to use solvents in certain applications. It will not be complete. It disappears, but it will lose its market.

Reprinted from; China Media Information Network