Water-based ink environmental protection and improvement

The requirements for printing in modern carton products are not only beautiful and applicable, but also increasingly require the attributes of their health. With the improvement of people's awareness of environmental protection, the urgent need for "green" printing supplies is increasing. Ink is an important part of printing materials. Water-based inks are simply called water inks. They are made of water-soluble resins, organic pigments, surfactants, and related additives after being compounded and ground.

The environment-friendly ink and ink market has developed rapidly. The main application fields of environment-friendly water-based inks are flexo printing and gravure printing. These two printing methods can be applied to cartons, including food packaging cartons, tobacco and wine packaging. Carton boxes, children's toys, etc. occupy a considerable proportion of carton packaging.

In recent years, flexographic printing has developed rapidly around the world and is considered to be “the best and most promising printing method on the planet” in developed countries in Europe and America. In the United States, 95% of flexographic prints and 80% of gravure prints use ink. Flexographic printing is still in its infancy in China and currently accounts for only about 3% of the printing industry. In the flexo package printing, the vast majority of domestic and foreign water-based ink printing. From 1995 to the end of 1998, China introduced more than 130 combined flexo printing lines in more than 20 provinces and cities in the country in just a few years. There are nearly 200 narrow flexographic printing production lines in China. More than 100,000 tons.

In the flexo package printing, the vast majority of domestic and foreign water-based ink printing. In recent years, China's ink has not only continued to grow steadily but also has a promising future. It is gratifying. At present, per capita consumption of printed matter in China is still less than 1/20 of that of developed countries. The per capita consumption of paper and paperboard has risen around 50 to 60 in the world in recent years, and the gap between per capita ink consumption and the world advanced level is even greater. This gap has just shown that China's market has enormous potential for development. This potential will gradually erupt with the sustained and stable development of China's national economy and form a huge impetus for market development. With the increasing popularity of green packaging and environmentally-friendly packaging, many cigarette factories, wineries, pharmaceutical companies, cosmetics, and food companies are preparing to use flexo-printed carton packaging. The proportion of flexographic printing in the printing field, especially in the area of ​​carton printing Will increase gradually. It is estimated that by 2010, flexographic printing will reach about 15% in the printing field, and annual demand will be over 100,000 tons of water-based ink.

China's water-based inks were first successfully developed and put into production by the Tianjin Ink Factory. There are about 12,000 carton plants of various sizes in China. If 10% of water-based inks are used to print high-grade cartons, each household ink is 10 tons, and each province needs water-based ink annually. 1,000 tons or so. It is imperative to vigorously develop, develop and produce high-grade water-based inks. The product can be applied not only to carton printing but also to gold and silver paperboard, coated paper, whiteboard paper, plastic film, corrugated paper, and stickers. Paper, paper packaging, books, magazines, and other printed flexo and gravure areas.

The advantages and disadvantages of ink painting

With its huge "green" advantage, water-based inks contain no volatile organic solvents, greatly reducing the emission of organic volatiles, thereby reducing air pollution, improving the environment for printing operators, and contributing to the health of employees. It can completely eliminate certain toxic and harmful substances in solvent-based inks, eliminate the harm to human body and the pollution of packaged goods, and improve the overall environmental quality. It is especially suitable for tobacco, wine, food, beverages, medicines, children's toys and other health Conditions require strict packaging and printing products. In addition, it can not only reduce the risk of fire and hidden dangers caused by static electricity and flammable solvents, but also reduce the toxicity of printed surface residues, and it is convenient for cleaning printing equipment.

Insufficient water-based inks, whether it is imported water-based ink or domestic water-based ink, there are currently the disadvantages of not anti-alkali, anti-ethanol and water, slow drying, poor gloss, easy to cause paper shrinkage. To achieve alkali resistance, ethanol resistance, water resistance, and gloss enhancement, only flexographic UV inks are used. This not only increases the printing cost but also increases the printing process. If there is an automatic beer packaging production line, the use of alkaline lubricants, the pH value of 9 to 10, water-based ink can not bear, touch it on the fade. There are summertime drinks, beer, etc. not only to put into the refrigerator, some even need to soak in ice water for a long time, water-based ink can not afford it.

Other problems include: Ink is difficult to wet and print on substrates such as polyethylene; drying time is still the most important issue in ink applications, unless the press is equipped with enough drying equipment, otherwise printing The speed is affected by this; the gloss of the ink is lower than that of the solvent ink, which greatly restricts the use of the ink in places where the glossiness is required to be high.

How ink products are safer and healthier

Through nearly 10 years of technological improvement, the ink-and-wash system has successfully resolved most of the original difficulties and gradually grown and matured. Under the premise of environmental protection, safety, and health, how the ink-and-wash products meet the requirements for optimal printing and post-processing, and the improvement of economic benefits is a topic that companies concerned consider.

Improve ink performance

At present, users of ink ink require improved performance in the pH stable ink system. The ink manufacturing industry must develop inks with stable pH values ​​during the printing process. That is, there is no need to detect and adjust the pH value in printing; re-dissolvability is another important research. In the field, the amine tends to solidify during the volatilization of the amine and even fix it on the printing plate.

Recently, ink manufacturers have improved the performance of the resin to make it more soluble, which means that the printing system can run longer before cleaning, ie, increase the production efficiency. Ink applications require continuous improvement in the application performance of polyethylene substrates. The ink-manufacturing industry is expected to increase the surface resistance of ink-and-ink printing, especially in terms of oil resistance, grease resistance, and better heat and freezing resistance. Recently in Europe and North America, product innovation has been driven primarily by meeting user requirements. The specific requirements for ease of use come from users, which will also be the driving force for new product development.

Keeping up with the environmental situation

In order to achieve even more stringent environmental protection management goals, printers are always looking for new ways of solvent ink printing operations to meet government regulations. The current focus of the printing industry is to strengthen the handling of emissions from solvent ink printing. The usual practice is to use "incinerators" to absorb and incinerate VOCS. Other, more creative, applications are VOCS-based microbes or bacteria. All of these methods rely on the efficient absorption of VOCS for transport to systems that can be neutralized or incinerated or absorbed by microorganisms.