How to Extend the Pot Life of Polyaspartic Polyurea?

What is Pot Life?

Pot life, also known as usable life or working time, refers to the period a thermosetting resin or adhesive, after the addition of a hardener or additive, remains workable. This duration ends when the system's viscosity rises to a point where it's no longer usable. Factors such as the type and amount of hardener, additives, and ambient temperature can affect pot life. This metric significantly impacts the applicability of coatings and the final performance of the cured coating layer. It's crucial to apply coatings within their pot life. Exceeding it alters the coating’s viscosity and performance. For instance, if a two-component coating is mixed and left too long before application, its viscosity increases, performance decreases, and it may even become unusable due to gelling.

Why is the Pot Life of Polyaspartic Polyurea Short?

Polyaspartic polyurea, whether used in coatings or adhesives, is a two-component material requiring a hardener. Its short pot life mainly results from the high reactivity of the polyaspartic resin's primary amine functional groups with isocyanate hardeners. While this grants polyaspartic polyurea rapid drying and low-temperature curing properties, it also leads to a shorter usable period.

Ways to Extend the Pot Life of Polyaspartic Polyurea:

1. Appropriately add diluents.
2. Partially replace fast-drying resins like F420 with slower-drying ones such as F520.
3. Avoid substances like water, hydroxyl, acid, and base in the coating system, as they can catalyze polyaspartic polyurea.
4. Adding molecular sieves is a standard and effective method.
5. Replace some fast-curing HDI trimer with slower-curing polyurethane prepolymers.
6. Bake pigment fillers to remove water.
7. Select different pigment fillers.

Feiyang has been specializing in the production of raw materials for polyaspartic coatings for 30 years and can provide polyaspartic resins, hardeners and coating formulations. Some of our polyaspartic coating formulations: Polyaspartic Coating

Feel free to contact us: marketing@feiyang.com.cn

Our products list:

• Polyaspartic Resin
• Isocyanate Hardener
• Special Chemical

Learn more polyaspartic knowledge: Polyaspartic FAQ

Shenzhen Feiyang Protech Corp., Ltd. specializes in researching and producing polyaspartic polyurea resin and other new chemical products. We are recognized as a "National Special New Key Little Giant" and a "State-level High-tech Enterprise", with more than 50 polyaspartic polyurea invention patents. We also participated in the preparation of 13 industry standards for polyaspartic polyurea materials as a leading company in this field, ranking No.1 in the Chinese market.

In the coating industry, polyaspartic polyurea is used in construction machinery, automobile, containers, fan blades, marine heavy corrosion protection, and high-end industrial and commercial floor coatings. In the adhesive field, it is mainly used in sealants, stone adhesives, electronic adhesives, film circuit packaging adhesives, and other high-end applications. In the waterproofing materials sector, it is primarily used in hydroelectric dams, water parks, building waterproofing repair materials, and other areas. In the structural materials field, it is applied to curling tracks, artificial ice skating rinks, and other structural materials.

Polyaspartic polyurea is considered a high-end new material in the strategy of manufacturing power. We have broken the foreign technology monopoly and filled the domestic market gap. Due to its comprehensive characteristics of "Environmental protection, Energy saving, and Long durability", polyaspartic polyurea can contribute to the realization of genuine carbon neutrality in the coatings, adhesives, and materials industries.

Since 2012, Feiyang polyaspartic ester resin has been supplied overseas. It has been widely used to replace Bayer's current polyaspartic system in many coating companies and has been applied in anti-corrosion and waterproofing by international coating companies.