Kansai Paint’s Value Provided
- Coatings are fluid products that add special surface functions to objects coated by them.
This page introduces the technological issues and concepts for which Kansai Paint can provide solutions based on its fundamental and underlying technologies.
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Value Provided
Buildings vibrate constantly at the microscopic level, affecting the painted coatings intended to serve design and protective purposes. Exterior paints for buildings are therefore designed to be more flexible than coatings for automotive or other applications. However, this also results in reduced antifouling properties. Kansai Paint’s composite ultra-low-pollution high-weather-resistance acrylic silicone resin paint is an acrylic silicone emulsion with a monomer composition that offers superior low pollution properties compared to conventional paint. It also improves coating hardness without cracking or peeling due to vibration, enabled through our resin synthesis technology. It’s used as a composite low-pollution paint that draws on composition blending technologies to incorporate agents that prevent contamination from mold and algae in addition to general fouling.
At thermal, hydroelectric, and nuclear power stations, water taken from reservoirs, rivers, or the ocean is used to drive power turbines, either directly or by converting the water into steam. High power generation efficiency requires smooth water flow, which in turn requires keeping the walls of the intake channels clean. The main types of fouling that occur on the intake channel walls are algae, shellfish, and arthropods such as barnacles. Intake channel walls in contact with water are coated with paint that discourages the adherence of these organisms.
Polymer silicone oil can be encapsulated inside a silicone resin with a three-dimensional cross-linked structure to form a coating that slowly releases silicone oil into the water. The combined effects of water and oil repellency due to the low polarity of the silicone oil ensure antifouling characteristics over extended periods of time.
The main constituents of ship hull antifouling paints are hydrolyzable polymers and antifouling agents that repel organisms. The antifouling mechanism has two main characteristics: The first consists of a hydrolyzable polymer (silicone polymer) that ensures stable film renewal via uniform hydrolyzation from the surface in seawater. The second consists of a combination of the dispersibility of cuprous oxide used as an antifouling agent with rheology control technologies, which keep the surface of the film smooth while leaching out cuprous oxide to keep marine organisms from adhering to the surface. In addition to the core technologies that allow for film renewal and result in outstanding antifouling properties, surface smoothness helps reduce seawater resistance and improves fuel efficiency for vessels. The results for ocean-going and coastal ships are significant.
- AF paint hydrolyzable polymer transformation in seawater
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- Biological repellency mechanism due to antifouling agent leaching
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- Antifouling efficacy on actual ship
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The most effective ways to reduce the LCC and LCA of steel structures involve extending corrosion resistance service life and maintenance cycles and simplifying maintenance. Among the most effective ways to extend corrosion resistance service life is to increase the thickness of the coating film.
A main agent consisting of bisphenol epoxy resin with excellent oxygen barrier properties and a reactive diluent in combination with highly reactive amine curing agent accounts for more than 90% of the active ingredients in the ultra-high solid coating. The coating achieves a film thickness of more than 1 mm in a single application. In a long-term joint study with the Port and Airport Research Institute, this product maintained corrosion resistance for 35 years* without maintenance.
* Corrosion and Repair Manual for Steel Harbor Structures (Coastal Development Institute of Technology)
The most effective ways to reduce the LCC and LCA of steel structures involve extending corrosion resistance service life and maintenance cycles and simplifying maintenance. Among the most effective ways to do this is to both simplify rust removal and surface preparation during repainting, in addition to providing long-term corrosion resistance.
Technologies that directly suppress the three types of corrosion currents help when dealing with surfaces characterized by residual rust. Outstanding corrosion resistance of surfaces with residual rust can be achieved using polymer bisphenol epoxy resin emulsion technologies that provide strong oxygen barrier functions, corrosion-resistant pigment technologies with excellent passive film formation, and technologies for forming stable films on fragile and uneven rust surfaces. This technology has received a technical award from the Japan Society of Corrosion Engineering and is registered with NETIS.*
* NETIS registration number: KK-220040-A
Mosquitoes aren’t simply nuisance pests—they spread infectious diseases. According to WHO reports, one such disease, malaria, infected approximately 247 million people and resulted in some 619,000 deaths in 2021. Focusing on the behavioral characteristic of mosquitoes—in particular, that they spend more time resting on walls or ceilings than flying—mosquito-repellent paint applied to painted surfaces affects the mosquito’s nervous system upon contact and demonstrates repellent and blood-feeding deterrent effects.
A key aspect of the development of mosquito repellent paint involves the controlled release of active ingredients from the paint film. Inadequate release leads to ineffective results, while excessive release reduces the sustainability of the effect. To achieve the optimal release of active ingredients, resins, pigments, and raw materials are carefully selected and mixed to ensure the appropriate amounts of active ingredients are present on the paint film surface.
Kansai Paint’s Anti-Mosquito Paint is a paint that protects humans from infection in this way.
This Anti-Mosquito Paint has drawn significant attention around the world, with a growing reputation overseas, particularly in Southeast Asia and Africa. Naturally, it has been tested to ensure it does not affect the health of humans or animals. The product reflects our goal of helping to solve global issues through collaborations with various international organizations, including field surveys to prove its efficacy in the Republic of Zambia with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and joint research with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Fireproof coatings provide thermal insulation to steel structures to prevent their collapse due to the effects of heat during fires. In Japan, inorganic fiber-based coatings like rock wool are widely used. However, these pose issues related to appearance and safety, which has resulted in widespread replacement overseas. Fireproof paint, among the alternative materials, consists of a thin film under normal conditions, but expands due to the heat of a fire to form an insulating layer called char. This has excellent visual appearance under normal conditions compared to inorganic fiber-based materials and is finding expanding use in applications for which design aesthetics matter.
Taika Tect is a two-component fireproof paint that uses resins and cross-linking systems that depart significantly from conventional fireproof paints. It offers fire resistance equivalent or superior to conventional fireproof paints, excellent outdoor durability, and allows application times to be reduced from 1/2 to 1/3. It can be applied on-site in the same way as conventional products and can also be pre-applied by steel fabricators. It has gained recognition for its aesthetic appeal, time-savings in applications, and durability and has been adopted for use in numerous buildings.
Direct sunlight striking the surface of a roof increases surface temperatures. This heat then flows inside buildings, heating the interior. Kansai Paint’s Ales Cool paint is designed to suppress rising roof surface temperatures to prevent rising interior temperatures and help reduce air conditioning costs. Ales Cool relies on a double-blocking effect created by a basecoat and topcoat system to suppress rising roof temperatures. Nearly half of solar energy is received as infrared radiation, making reflecting this infrared radiation crucial. Ales Cool harnesses the optical properties of pigments used in the topcoat to scatter infrared radiation. Especially in the case of black pigments, special oxide pigments are used to scatter infrared radiation, despite the dark pigment. Infrared radiation that cannot be scattered by the topcoat alone is further scattered by the basecoat, which incorporates a special titanium oxide, minimizing the infrared absorption of the coating film. This double-blocking effect has been shown to reduce rooftop surface temperatures by approximately 14°C.
This refers to a coating film that feels soft when you stroke the surface with fingertips. It can be evaluated based on four sensations: dry-wet feel, rough-smooth feel, warm-cold feel, and soft-hard feel. These sensations can be quantified as a soft feel value given by the equation shown in the figure below.
Various types are available, including a silky type, which provides a silky finish with a smooth touch, and a rubber type, which offers a moist, softer, and more rubber-like texture. All exhibit higher soft feel values than conventional matte coatings.
Snow or ice adhering to equipment like aircraft parts, wind turbine blades, anemometers, and other instruments increases air resistance and generates energy losses. Similarly, snow or ice adhering to road signs, car headlights, and other objects obscures surfaces and impairs their functionality. Methods like chemical spraying or manual removal pose significant environmental burdens and are labor-intensive, which has generated persistent calls for maintenance-free solutions using coatings.
Snow and ice crystals consist of water molecules arranged regularly with hydrogen bonds, which interact with water molecules near the substrate surface, generating adhesion. Reducing this adhesion force requires reducing the points of interaction. Research is currently underway on technologies that create water molecules bound to the resin in the coating film, altering the bonding angles of water molecules in snow and ice and causing a mismatch between the coating film and snow or ice. While this technology is more effective with softer coating films, softer films are more susceptible to fouling, making it essential to combine water molecule binding and fouling resistance in the coating film.
Ales Shikkui consists primarily of an acrylic emulsion, extender pigments, titanium white, and hydrated lime, transforming traditional plaster into paint form.
The main component, hydrated lime, possesses various properties, in particular a strong alkalinity when dissolved in water. The coating is highly porous, resulting in a larger surface area compared to conventional coatings and giving it the ability to deodorize acidic odor compounds. When droplets containing viruses adhere to Ales Shikkui, the strong alkaline effects of the hydrated lime alters the spike proteins forming the virus, keeping them from invading animal cells. Viruses making contact with Ales Shikkui are thus rendered harmless. Its antibacterial properties have also been confirmed since very few types of bacteria are capable of multiplying in strong alkaline environments.
Its alkalinity and surface porosity exhibit excellent deodorizing power, especially against acidic odors.
The KP Pearl and BEL Pearl microbial immobilization carriers are highly biocompatible hydrogel polymers developed using core paint technologies, including resin synthesis and photocuring technologies. These materials are intended to serve as carriers for advanced applications involving microorganisms and enzymes.
For wastewater treatment, the KP Pearl bound immobilization carrier allows beneficial microorganisms to adhere to surfaces at high concentrations. The product has a proven track record going back 20 years as a charge-type fluid carrier capable of significantly improving purification efficiency. Its characteristics are especially suitable for reducing facility size and for the biological treatment of persistent substances.
The BEL Pearl comprehensive immobilization carrier encapsulates microorganisms and enzymes to allow repeated use. It helps boost productivity in the production of valuable substances derived from biomass materials by maximizing the power of microorganisms and enzymes.
Surfaces treated with special surface treatment agents that possess both hydrophilic and oil repellent properties repel oil as they dry, making them less susceptible to oil adhesion. The hydrophilic characteristics during washing make it easier to remove adhering oil. For example, bathroom dirt is primarily caused by sebum (oil) from the body; therefore adjusting the hydrophilic and oil repellent properties appropriately and using coating design technologies to ensure hydrophilic and oil repellent properties allow the removal of sebum dirt using just water.
Air conditioners contain heat exchangers for cooling or heating air composed of aluminum fins. When cooling hot and humid air, moisture in the air condenses on the surface of the aluminum fins, forming water droplets that connect adjacent aluminum fins and reduce cooling efficiency. To prevent this, hydrophilic treatment agents are applied to the surface of the aluminum fins. Hydrophilic treatment agents are used typically not merely to form hydrophilic coatings, but also to create surface irregularities and achieve superhydrophilicity. Kansai Paint has developed a hydrophilic treatment agent for outdoor units that smoothes the surface irregularities of the hydrophilic treatment agent at the molecular level, achieving both hydrophilicity and water-slidability.
This has been demonstrated to enable an energy consumption reduction for outdoor units of approximately 16%.
Protecting products from staining is among the key roles demanded of paint. The low-staining paint developed by Kansai Paint is designed to repel water and oil to keep stains from setting and enabling them to be easily removed.
The key to easy removal of stains is to reduce the surface energy of the coating film for preventing stains from adhering and to ensure that stains do not penetrate into the coating film. To address these challenges, Kansai Paint boosted the cross-linking density of the base resin using organic-inorganic nano-composite materials—something not achievable with conventional organic resins. Silicone-based materials are also used to cover the surface to achieve this.
The resulting coating is being examined for various applications, including graffiti-resistant paint to prevent the penetration of marker pen ink, materials for use in kitchens that require resistance to staining from foods such as coffee and curry, and automotive coatings that allow the easy removal of insects and resin.
Acid rain and other environmental issues have made it necessary to protect the paintwork of new cars during storage and transportation. In response, Kansai Paint has developed the RAPGARD-F protection system. While protective films provide protection through high film strength, they also cause various issues, including scratching, adhesive residue, gloss changes, and even marking (microscopic deformation of the coating surface due to material transfer between the coating and the adhesive). Of these, marking is an especially challenging issue. Applying technologies created in developing paints, Kansai Paint has meticulously examined and resolved numerous issues to develop a viable commercial product, including the composition of the adhesive, elasticity modulus of the film, thermal properties of the substrate, film thickness, and the adhesive application agent. While the adhesive strength of protective film tends to increase over time after application, making it difficult to peel off, Kansai Paint’s product is designed to ensure consistent peel strength over extended periods, allowing easy disposal of the protective film after use.
The electrodes of lithium-ion batteries consist of particles in the form of active materials, conductive assistants, and binders. The battery manufacturing process is similar to that of paints, whereby a slurry containing suitably dispersed particles is first adjusted, then applied to a metal plate. The carbon forming the conductive assistant must be dispersed with special care; this is vital for the overall conductivity of the electrode film. Kansai Paint has focused on pigment dispersion technologies to control the dispersion of conductive carbon and improve battery performance.
Kansai Paint draws on its dispersant development expertise to optimize the dispersion conditions required to achieve a state in which conductive carbon is appropriately chained within the film without aggregation. This improves the performance of the final battery. The technology is currently used in commercially available hybrid vehicles.
Kansai Paint offers a conductive primer for the electrostatic coating of automotive bumpers and other non-conductive resin molded products. The primer is compatible with black and white conductive pigments and pigments ranging from low to high brightness.
This allows electrostatic coating of virtually any topcoat paint, from colored to white pearlescent, improving coating efficiency and reducing waste without use of booth filters, for example.
A rapid-curing epoxy powder paint can be applied as a thick coating to form a film with high electrical insulation properties. This helps protect electronic components and prevent electric shock. The paint is applied to components requiring high electrical resistance, including electrodes (bus bars) with large current capacities in distribution boards at substation and other facilities, automotive parts, and household appliances.
In the formation of conductive films, which are a type of functional coating, conductive fiber particles capable of forming long-distance conductive paths with a single particle exhibit high conductivity. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are expected to show great potential in the future as a conductive material. However, due to high aspect ratios and inert surfaces, CNTs tend to form aggregates in liquids. In response, Kansai Paint has developed a highly conductive CNT slurry by combining various paint technologies, including technologies that allow adsorption predictions and dispersion methods based on pigment surface properties and dispersant characteristics as well as computational techniques to maintain appropriate dispersion while maintaining long fibers. Applications include transparent (white) conductive films, batteries, and thermal conduction films.
Colorants are concentrated slurries of pigments that can be mixed into various paints. Pigments supplied as agglomerates do not color the paint when mixed directly; they must be dispersed to an appropriate particle size and processed into a slurry. In this slurry formation process, Kansai Paint uses proprietary technologies to formulate the dispersants in accordance with the pigment characteristics and to adjust dispersion to the required particle size. Kansai Paint has used these technologies to develop the Kansai Aqua Color series as a marketable functional slurry, meeting not just the requirements for slurry functionality, such as color stability and sedimentation stability, but providing other paint functions, including high weather resistance.
The paint technologies that allow extremely thin coating layers arrange aluminum flake pigments within the paint to achieve the ultimate metallic finish. This paint clearly accentuates the form of automobiles, providing a strong sense of shading and reflection intensity. It is available in a silver tone that ranks among the world’s best for automotive exterior panel paintwork.
Rail vehicle design is trending toward curved, streamlined designs. At the same time, demand is also strong for three-dimensional textures in the exterior colors of rail vehicles, similar to those used for automotive exterior panels. Additionally, there is a need for colors with high chroma that allow for regional colors, visibility, and safety. Expressing sophistication by combining both three-dimensionality and high chroma requires a challenging three-coat pearlescent painting process.
The first design layer ensures a high chroma yellow. The second design layer expresses three-dimensionality via a highly transparent pearlescent material, achieving a gleaming, sparkling, high-quality design without clouding the underlying high chroma yellow. This color design technology has been adopted for the Haga Utsunomiya LRT (Light Rail Transit), a future transportation infrastructure project for the sustainable urban development, by Utsunomiya City, Haga Town, Utsunomiya Light Rail Co., Ltd., and GK Design Group. The train won the Special Award in the 2023 Good Design Awards and adds vibrancy to the city.
Photoresist electrodeposition is used to form circuits on the printed circuit boards found in electronic devices. These etching resists use the characteristics of electrodeposition used to apply anti-corrosion and other coatings to automobile bodies. Among their features is the capacity to form uniform resist films on various surfaces, whether applied to inner surfaces of substrate through-holes, complex designs, or scratches due to handling devices. There are two types of photoresist: the positive type, in which the exposed parts are dissolved; and the negative type, in which the unexposed parts are dissolved. Kansai Paint specializes in positive type electrodeposition resists (PEB type), which allow the formation of high-density circuits even on substrates of complex designs. The process of (1) electrodepositing the resist, (2) exposing it to UV light through a photomask, and (3) heating (PEB: post exposure bake) results in the thermal cross-linking of unexposed parts, significantly increasing the difference in dissolution between exposed and unexposed parts. This increases the margin of control in the (4) development process, and allows to create landless through-holes, which are difficult to form using dry film processes.
