Coatings World - March 2013

“I knew I wanted to go into inventing and design, and I knew I wanted to help people. I took a few napkin designs and turned them into the largest prosthetics and research design company in the world in about three years,” Martin explained.

Martin’s lecture included engaging the crowd with questions and personal anecdotes, including a third grade “ invention book,” which he shared in order to explain how inventing had always been his passion. He also included stories of some young entrepreneurs and their roads to success in business.

“If you can understand the entrepreneurial side, you real-
ize you can have a far lesser product and be more successful
than if you have a supe-
rior product and don’t
understand this,” he ex-
plained. “Getting expo-
sure and understanding
the entrepreneurial side
is so important.”
Martin also shared
his plans to hold an
‘Innovation Competition,’
in which he will be offer-
ing $100,000 for the most
innovative idea.

Another key speech was
given by Eric Williams,
Reactive Surfaces,
University of Mississippi,
on the subject of “Marine
Cargo Tank Coatings;
The Extreme Chemical
Resistance of Lipase Bioadditive in Epoxy Tank Coatings.”
This speech focused on marine cargo transportation of dif-
ferent products that require cleaning in between shipments, and
the cross contamination that can occur in this process.

“We’re talking about 10,000 cargo tankers. These tanks are
typically made up of different materials, either stainless steel or
steel. These are coated and contain chemicals,” Williams said.
” The uniqueness of the chemical cargo tankers is that they can
transport biofuels.”
Williams shared that functional coatings are being engi-
neered to reduce costs. He also explained that his desire is to
bring in something new to a system already in place.

“We want to take and provide solutions. That’s really what our innovation company does; provide solutions,” Williams explained.

In addition to that, Dave Fasano, Dow Coating Materials, discussed “Optimizing Hiding and Performance of Architectural Coatings,” which focused on making the most of raw materials in a tough market with rising costs as well as performance and reformulation options.

Michael R. Van De Mark, Missouri S&T Coating Institute, presented “Surface Tension of Colloidol Unimolecular Polymer Particles at Air/Water Interface,” which discussed the process of measuring Colloidal Unimolecular Polymer suspensions.

Second Annual Sidney Lauren
Memorial Lecture

The second Annual Sidney Lauren Memorial Lecture was
presented by Kip Sharp of Sasol North America, and was
on “High-Mole Alkylphenol Ethoxylate Free Sulfates for
Emulsion Polymerization.”
Sharp opened his speech by explaining his memories of
attending prior Waterborne Symposiums, first as a student
at University of Mississippi and now as a colleague.

“It’s a real honor to present this talk. I’ve been to about fourteen symposiums, and have great memories from them.

I’ve enjoyed it as an undergrad, graduate student and now a colleague,” Sharp said.

Sharp’s presentation focused on what many of his previous presentations at the Symposium stemmed from and that is alkylphenol ezthoxylate (APEOs), which include a variety of different compounds.

“Why use these materials?” Sharp asked.

“Well they’ve been
around since the mid
1950s, at least that’s
when they got their first
use, and the reason they
were good is because
they were extremely, extremely versatile and they always
worked. They are really good surfactants.”
Sharp explained that including environmental risks, there are
a lot of reasons these surfactants are being phased out, with al-
ternatives being explored that are free from APEOs.

“First of all, the biodegradation. When these were used as detergents in Europe, it was found that they were not biodegradable. Another reason they are being phased out is because of their perceived environmental hazards. They are supposedly estrogen mimics. This hasn’t been proven but they are still being phased out. There are also government regulations on them,” he said.

The student poster sessions, sponsored by Eastman Chemicals, were presented on Thursday, Feb. 7, and the winners of the student poster awards were Emily Hoff in first place with her poster titled “Hydrazone-Based Dynamic Covalent Chemistry for Reversible Brush Surface Modification;” second place went to Li Xiong for her poster titled, “Spray-Deposited Superamphiphobic Coatings via Photopolymerization of Hybrid Thiolene Polymer Networks;” third place went to Michael Sims for his poster titled, “Tunable pH-Respon-sive Sulfonamide-based Polymers via RAFT as Potential Mediators of Endosomal Drug Release;” fourth place went to Christopher Childers for his poster titled, “Synthesis and