Textile chemistry

2023-11-30

Innovation for more sustainable textile coatings

Covestro offers a new aqueous and partially bio-based PU dispersion under the name Impranil® CQ DLU, which can be used to produce, among other things, trims for car interiors. © Covestro

Climate protection requires the industry to gradually move away from petroleum and other fossil raw materials and instead use raw materials from renewable sources. That’s why Covestro is increasingly relying on alternative raw materials, including those from biomass. For example, the company offers a new aliphatic polyester carbonate polyether polyurethane (PU) dispersion for textile coating under the name Impranil® CQ DLU, in which around 34 percent of the carbon contained is of plant origin. Impranil® CQ DLU expands the existing range of partially bio-based dispersions for textile coating with a product whose purely petroleum-based variant Impranil® DLU is very popular with customers.

Since the new dispersion has the same outstanding properties as the established one, as well as a high solids content of 55 percent, customers can now replace Impranil® DLU one-to-one with Impranil® CQ DLU in their processing operations – and thereby easily achieve an additional increase in textile coating sustainability. Sustainability is increasingly becoming a key purchasing criterion not only for the industry, but also for brand owners and consumers. CQ stands for "Circular Intelligence". The core idea of the CQ concept is to label Covestro products if the alternative raw material base exceeds a content of 25 percent, as in this case.

As the raw material for INSQIN® technology, the established Impranil® DLU already enables aqueous textile coating without the use of solvents. The ecological footprint of such a coating is significantly lower than that of solvent-based systems. "With the innovation Impranil® CQ DLU as part of our Impranil® CQ portfolio, we are now enabling the textile coatings industry to take the next step towards more sustainability through the increased use of renewable resources," says Dr. Torsten Pohl, Head of Global Textile Coatings at Covestro.

Impranil® CQ DLU is suitable, among other things, for producing synthetic materials for sports articles, technical textiles, car interiors, and bags. Properties of coatings based on the new high-performance dispersion include excellent hydrolysis resistance, very good lightfastness, as well as high tensile strength and scratch resistance. In addition, the coatings have a pleasant feel and good alkali resistance. Impranil® CQ DLU can be used for both the intermediate coat and the top coat. The dispersion can be applied in various ways: The spectrum ranges from direct or transfer coating to printing processes and microfiber dipping.

Visit us at the Automotive Interiors Expo

From December 5 to 7, 2023, visitors to the Automotive Interiors Expo in Stuttgart can explore the new PU dispersion for themselves: A car interior door panel coated with Impranil® CQ DLU will be demonstrated at the Covestro exhibition stand no. 3424 in Hall 3.