New Route for Microcapsule Synthesis

Abstract

Studies on the growth of microorganisms on painted surfaces and other coatings has increased during the last decades as many antigrowth agents have gradually been prohibited due to toxicity. Current applications using biocides lose the protection quite rapidly as small molecular size renders a fast diffusional biocide leakage. A promising improvement of antigrowth protection can be achieved by the use of encapsulated biocides in the paint. The candidate method to produce microcapsules has dichloromethane as a key constituent in the synthesis step.^{[ 3 ]} Dichloromethane is hazardous and thereby often not allowed to be used at industrial scale. In this article, we show that ethyl acetate has equivalent physiochemical properties as dichloromethane in the production of microcapsules and thus can be used in order to fulfill legislative criteria.

Keywords:

• Biocides
• ethyl acetate
• microcapsules
• paint

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Georgia Kourouklidou and Robert Svensson at Capeco AB. They also thank Dan Isaksson and Johan Hurtig for useful discussions. This study was supported by VINNOVA.