Smith Paint Products | Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Web Report to Client

Mr. Chuck Brunner from Smith Paint Products reported that a line of specialty paint formulas and coating were failing. The failures appeared to be related to the water quality of the make up water. The types of failures that were reported were the paint would clump or form a precipitate and/or it would not adhere to the surface. To be able to reproduce this condition, Mr. Brunner supplied a sample of water from Orlando, Florida. This source was one of the water sources that appeared too reactive with the coating. In addition, Mr. Brunner provided a second source of water from Colton, California. The scope of the preliminary evaluation was limited to these objectives:

1. Conduct a preliminary water quality characterization of these two water sources;
2. Attempt to reproduce the paint failure with the Orlando, Florida sample;
3. Evaluate possible chemical related to specific cations or anions in the water; and
4. Make recommendations on potential engineering or management solutions.

The Project

After initiating the project, the scope of work was further modified to include a more detailed evaluation of the relationship between water hardness and sulfates and the occurance of coating problems. For the two water quality samples, the reaction or mixing of the water and coating caused the formation of pin-floc immediately upon mixing the water and chemicals. Overtime, the masses began to coagulate and form larger particles that began to settle out of solution. With respect to the chemical matrix testing, positive clumping reactions occurred immediately when the matrix contained calcium. Based on this result, it is likely that the reaction with hardness, i.e., multivalent cations like calcium, may be the cause of the negative reactions with the test solutions.

The samples from Florida and California had a total hardness ranging from 264 to 285 mg CaCO3/L. To test this hypothesis, the water samples were treated using the following water treatment methods deionization, cation removal, and anion removal. Deionization was accomplished by allowing the test solution to react with a deionization resin. The deionization resin removes cations and anions from the water and exchanges cations for hydrogen ions and anions for hydroxyl ions. The control solution was deionized water with a conductivity of < 1 umohms/cm with an estimated total dissolved solid of < 0.01 mg/L.

The cation exchange resin, C-100, is a water softening resin that was manufactured by The Purolite Company, 3620 G Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19134
(http: //www.purolite.com). The resin are spherical beads that vary in diameter from 0.3 to 1.2 mm and are manufactured using an inert co-polymer of polystyrene which function groups added to the resin surface. The resins can be recharged using a brine or sodium chloride solution. The cation exchange resin exchanges divalent and multivalent cations like  calcium, magnesium, iron, manganese, and aluminum for sodium or hydrogen ions.

The anionic exchange resin is a removes negative ion from solution. The resin that was manufactured by The Purolite Company, 3620 G Street, Philadelphia, PA 19134 (www.purolite.com). The anionic resins retain all the ions with a negative charge, such as: sulfates, carbonate, bicarbonate, chloride, and nitrate and exchange them with hydroxyl ions (OH-).

When the both water samples and the control samples were deionized or treated with the cation resin, the mixed paint product do not clump, precipitate, or flocculate. When the samples were only treated with the anion resin, the water samples and the calcium chloride solutions still caused a precipitate or clumping to occur. Therefore, it appears that "softening" the water would resolve the clumping problem and going deionization or using deionized/distilled water would be excessive and likely not cost efficient.

Clumping Associated with Water Hardness Issues, i.e., divalent and multivalent cations in the water.

The next series of experiments were designed to determine at what point does the water hardness begin to cause problems with clumping and precipitation of the paint products. This preliminary assessment was conducted by preparing solutions of CaCO3 with concentrations of 0 mg/L, 5 mg/L, 25 mg/L, 30 mg/L, 40 mg/l, 50 mg/L, 75 mg/L, 100 mg/L, 150 mg/L, and 300 mg/L. The test solutions were prepared using a laboratory grade calcium carbonate and the actual hardness concentrations were determined by a titration method. The test samples were prepared following the instructions provided by the manufacturer. Based on this preliminary laboratory experimentation, it appears that clumping does not occur when the total hardness is less than 30 mg CaCO3/L or 1.75 grains per gallon. Based on standard descriptions for hardness, it appears that waters classified, as soft water, i.e., hardness less than 17 mg CaCO3/L, should not have an adverse reaction with the paint product.

Web Report with photos