Industrial coatings provide steel and other metal structures with durable and reliable protection against their environment. In order to achieve this, the coating system must be formulated and designed to handle the harsh conditions of its environment, whether it is the heat, sun, chemicals, or constant abrasions. Together with other factors such as labor, costs, desired service life of the coating, they will help determine which particular coating is most suitable for your application. Understanding the most common types of industrial coatings and how they work to create complete protection enables designers and users alike to select the best-suited system.
Epoxy coatings
This kind of industrial coating is usually made of an epoxy base and a curing agent. Any of these components can be manipulated to achieve a wide variety of properties. In particular, epoxy polyamide industrial coatings provide excellent moisture resistance while the phenolic epoxy coatings offer great chemical resistance. With this flexibility of epoxy coatings, they are commonly used for many purposes like an intermediate coat, primer, and a topcoat.
Polyurethanes coatings
Most of the time polyurethane industrial coatings are used as a topcoat in applications where high resistance for abrasion and durability are the key to successful use. These coatings come either as aromatic or aliphatic. They can be used as an intermediate on epoxy on a highway bridge and a topcoat over a zinc-rich primer. They can also serve as a topcoat on concrete walls and floors of a nuclear facility. Other usual applications include the exterior of wastewater treatment facilities and the topside of ships. Essentially, polyurethanes are so versatile that they can be formulated to deal with a wide variety of service environments.
Organic and inorganic zinc-rich
Zinc-rich industrial coatings are available as organic and inorganic. The organic type usually contains epoxy or polyurethane binders while the inorganic one contains silicate binders. The purpose of the zinc is to provide galvanic protection for the surface it will coat as it is the one that corrodes and not the metal behind it, thus it serves as a barrier between the metal and its environment.