Driven by smog governance and environmental‑protection incentives, traditional highly‑polluting paints are being rapidly replaced by emerging coatings such as water‑based paints. Dai Guoqing, Deputy Secretary‑General of the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, stated on the 22nd that in 2016, the output of above‑designated‑size coating enterprises nationwide reached 18.9978 million tons, a year‑on‑year increase of 7.2%; meanwhile, water‑based paints enjoyed booming production and sales, achieving a 100% growth rate. In the first half of this year, water‑based paints accounted for as high as 70% of ongoing, commissioned and planned construction projects in the coating industry.
Many people are unaware that commonplace paint is also one of the contributors to smog. Organic solvents must be added for paint application, and large quantities of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released from paints, together with vehicle exhaust and industrial waste gas, eventually lead to ozone and PM2.5 pollution. By contrast, water‑based paints can be diluted simply with water, generating less than one‑tenth of the volatile organic compounds produced by conventional paints.
"Water‑based conversion is a vital approach for the coating and finishing industry to shift toward green and environmentally‑friendly development," Dai Guoqing remarked at the inaugural Water‑based Paint Expo held on the same day. With increasingly stringent environmental‑protection enforcement in recent years, China has rolled out a set of measures including levying additional consumption tax on traditional paint and formulating emission standards for air pollutants in key downstream coating‑using industries to accelerate the transition from solvent‑borne paints to water‑based paints.
"At present, water‑based paints have seen relatively extensive adoption in sectors including steel structures, wooden furniture and automobiles. The trend of 'switching from solvent‑borne to water‑based paints' has begun to expand across the upstream and downstream industrial chains of the coating sector," said Hong Dingyi, Dean of the Water‑based Paint Research Institute under the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China. It is projected that China’s market demand for water‑based paints will exceed 6.3 million tons in five years.
According to reporters, eco‑friendly water‑based paint was selected for the recent film‑coating renovation of the National Stadium (Bird’s Nest). The ubiquitous shared yellow bicycles on city streets are also coated with water‑based paint.
The Action Plan for Volatile Organic Compound Reduction in Key Industries issued jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other authorities explicitly requires that the proportion of green coating products with low (zero) volatile‑organic‑compound content should reach over 60% by 2018. Industry insiders generally hold that there remains huge room for further promotion of water‑based paints.
"China’s consumption of water‑based coatings stood at approximately 1.89 million tons in 2016, accounting for less than 10% of the total coating industry," Hong Dingyi noted. As the performance of water‑based paints improves, nearly 70 percent of anti‑corrosion coatings in previously hard‑to‑replace fields such as petrochemicals, railways and shipbuilding can now be substituted with water‑based alternatives.
