Covestro Launches Impranil® CQ DLU, a New Partially Bio-Based Waterborne Polyurethane Dispersion for Textile Coatings

Impranil® CQ DLU Now Available

New polyurethane dispersion products are approximately one-third bio-based.

To combat climate change, the chemical industry needs to move away from petroleum and other fossil raw materials and towards renewable feedstocks. Covestro is therefore increasingly using alternative raw materials, including biomass feedstocks. For example, the company has now launched Impranil® CQ DLU, a new aliphatic polycarbonate copolyurethane dispersion for textile coatings, which contains approximately 34% of the carbon content from plants. The pure petroleum-based version of Impranil® DLU has always been popular with customers, and the launch of Impranil® CQ DLU broadens Covestro’s current portfolio of bio-based dispersions for textile coatings.

The new product offers the same excellent properties as Impranil® DLU, as well as a high solids content of 55%. As a result, customers can now easily increase the sustainability of their textile coatings by replacing Impranil® DLU with Impranil® CQ DLU on a one-for-one basis during processing. Sustainability is critical to the chemical industry, brands and consumers, and is increasingly becoming a decisive purchasing factor. The CQ in the new product name stands for "Circular Intelligence" and is specifically used to identify Covestro products that contain at least 25% alternative raw materials.

As the raw material for INSQIN® technology, the existing Impranil® DLU already enables water-based textile coatings without the use of solvents. The carbon footprint of this coating is significantly lower than that of solvent-based systems. Dr. Torsten Pohl, Global Head of Textile Coatings at Covestro, said: “With the innovative Impranil® CQ DLU becoming part of our Impranil® CQ product portfolio, the textile coatings industry is now able to use more renewable resources and move towards being more sustainable.

Impranil® CQ DLU can be used to produce synthetic materials for products such as sporting goods, technical textiles, automotive interiors and luggage. Textile coatings based on this new high-performance dispersion offer excellent hydrolysis resistance, extremely high lightfastness, as well as high tensile strength and scratch resistance. In addition, the textile coating has a pleasant touch and good alkali resistance. Impranil® CQ DLU can be used in both midcoats and topcoats and is suitable for a variety of processes including direct coating, transfer coating, printing and microfiber impregnation.