The development of water-based ink in our country is accelerating

In the past few years, the rapid development of China’s industrial sector has prompted China’s national economy to grow at a double-digit rate each year. At the same time, because many companies only pursue economic development one-sidedly, thus ignoring the pollution caused to the ecological environment, the problems caused by air and water pollution are the most serious and tend to be increasingly rampant. In recent years, with the continuous advancement of science and technology and the continuous improvement of people’s cultural level, human beings are paying more and more attention to the earth on which they live. Gradually realized that only the whole society can care for and care for our planet, and human beings can develop and multiply for a long time. To this end, the country has formulated a series of laws and regulations concerning environmental protection. In 1983, together with environmental protection and family planning, China was listed as two basic national policies.

Printing and packaging products are emerging industries in China. Printing and decorating products are one of the most widely penetrated products of human life. Its development is affected by the paper bundle of environmental conditions. It is imperative to develop "green" printed materials with little or no pollution. For this reason, in order to adapt to today's development, all major printing companies in China are researching and launching "green projects" and trying to reduce pollution to the environment. With the appearance of "green food and green products", it will inevitably require "green packaging and green printed materials" to correspond. As water-based inks use water as the main solvent, this trend is catered for.

Water-based ink development process

People conducted research and application of water-based inks earlier, especially in the mid-1960s. Due to environmental protection requirements and the shortage of petroleum raw materials, some developed countries have gradually banned the use of petroleum products for the manufacture of printing inks. As a result, people started to study non-organic solvent-based inks, making water-based inks have made great progress and development. Initially, water-based inks mainly used binders such as dextrins, insects, casein, and sodium natrium as water-based inks. The prepared aqueous ink is mainly used for printing some low-grade products. By the end of the 1960s, with the development of materials science, the synthesis technology of rosin modified maleic acid resin was successful, replacing casein, insects and other materials, and became the main material of water-based ink, which could basically meet the printing needs at the time, but These primary products still have some drawbacks, such as poor gloss, poor water resistance, poor adhesion, air bubbles, and poor storage stability. Later, people called this stage the first generation of water-based ink products.

In the 1970s, due to the oil crisis, the raw materials for printing inks were once again very tense. At the same time, the governments of various developed countries have legislated to control air quality and limit the emission of organic volatiles (VOC) to the atmosphere. They require strict packaging for food, beverage, and pharmaceuticals. Printed products (heavy metals, residual volume, etc.) are packaged. Ink research and development personnel from various countries have continued to conduct in-depth research to produce a solution-type styrene-acrylic copolymer resin as the second generation of water-based ink connection material, this product makes up for the first generation of water-based ink water resistance and poor storage stability. However, there is still a gap between gloss and printability compared with solvent inks. To this end, ink developers based on the second generation of water-based ink, the introduction of monomers such as acrylic acid and styrene polymerization, developed a polymer emulsion resin with a core-shell structure and a network structure, the series of resins has been greatly improved The luster and dryness of the ink promote the development of water-based inks, and the competition between water-based inks and solvent-based inks continues to widen the application fields. Water-based ink has entered a new period of development. This phase is called the water-based third-generation product and is currently the leading product of water-based ink in China.

The status of water-based ink

Although water-based inks have undergone the upgrading of three generations of products, they have been widely applied and developed in some developed countries. However, the application of water-based inks in China is not very popular, and there is still a certain gap compared with developed countries. In Europe and the United States, water-based inks used in the packaging industry account for 80% of the total package printing. However, our country only accounts for about 7%. In China, water-based inks are mainly used for flexographic printing, and the printing materials are mainly absorbent materials such as paper. In recent years, with the rapid development of the packaging industry, especially the wide application of photosensitive resin plates and laser ceramic anilox rollers, the development of flexographic printing has been accelerated. At the same time, it also led to the rapid development of flexographic inks.

Water-based ink development trend

Looking forward to the development of water-based ink in China, with the continuous development of the packaging industry and the society is a step, according to experts predict that by 2010 China's water-based ink will account for 25-30% of the total ink consumption. With the gradual implementation of China's ISO14000 environmental management system, the development prospect of water-based ink will be incalculable. It is reported that water-based inks are the only non-toxic inks that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Association for all printing inks. Non-toxic, non-polluting and environmentally friendly water-based inks will gradually replace solvent-based inks in the near future.