Beckers develops first LCA of UV/EB coil coating

Beckers has applied UV/EB curing technology to the coil coating industry. Since 2005, with the development of application technology, Becks has been developing and testing suitable coating formulations.

Beckers' first coil coating radiation curing system was launched in early 2023, and its LCAs study emphasized the significant sustainability advantages of UV/EB coil coatings compared to traditional technologies.

Significant savings in LCA CO2e

Beckers conducted LCAs on traditional solvent based and water-based coil coating technologies, as well as new UV/EB technologies. The evaluation covers a perspective from the cradle to the customer gate perspective - including the manufacturing of coatings, their component raw materials, and the customer's coil coating process for each coating technology.

The LCAs does not include the end use and end of life of steel manufacturing and coil coating products, as these life cycle stages are not within the scope of influence of Becks. However, minimizing the impact of coil coating formulations and their applications has become increasingly important for customers, as they are committed to significantly decarbonizing primary steel and aluminum production and addressing the challenges and requirements posed to them by legislation such as EU Green Deal.

By simulating the same coating system, thickness, and coil coating line speed, LCAs is made as comparable as possible, all of which are gates from the support to the coil coating customer.

“The LCAs emphasizes that compared to traditional coil coating techniques, UV/EB coil coating significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions and improves resource efficiency," said James Maxted, the director of global product sustainability. “The savings related to sustainability are mainly achieved through the cold curing UV/EB process, which does not require natural gas but can use renewable energy for electricity. Compared to the standard solvent formula, UV/EB curing also requires much less paint per square meter because the standard solvent formula contains a large amount of solvents required to promote application, but is burned through a regenerative thermal oxidizer (RTO).”