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Description:
The use of colorants has become very popular since the seventies and Finland has been one of the pioneering countries in colorant paste production. Colorant is a concentrated pigment paste which is used for tinting. Different tinting applications are for example decorative paints, industrial coatings, soft polyvinyl chloride and coated fabrics, leather finishes and thermoplastics.
Environmental demands and economical aspects cause a need for more energy- and ecoefficient ways to produce tinting pastes. The aim of the project is to improve basic knowledge of pigment dispersion and grinding process and to optimize the efficiency of an industrial paste production process. An optimized process would reduce raw material and energy costs in the tinting paste production as well as increase the color strength.
The aim of the experiments of this project is to study the effects of the independent variables such as viscosity of the grinded tinting paste, the charge of the beads in the milling chamber, the size of the milling beads, the mill rotor velocity, and the recycle flow rate on the color strength and energy consumption in the bead milling process. The most significant variable, as determined by Plackett-Burman and the Box-Behnken experiment plans, are used to model and optimize the process.
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