The amount of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) found in architectural paints has been reduced from over 400 g/L to often less than 50 or even 5 g/L as the industry has progressed from the solvent borne paints of the 1940's to the waterborne coatings of today. This progress has reduced the amount of solvents released to the atmosphere by hundreds of millions of pounds each year, but has also raised the expectation that the coatings of today will have very low odor. Consumers may correlate low odor with healthier, greener and cleaner, although this association is not always the case. In today's lower VOC paints, malodorants with a very low odor threshold can have a much larger impact on odor than their relative quantity would predict. A range of raw and formulation materials were evaluated through the use of analytical tools such as GC-Olfactory analysis, as well as human odor panels. A number of the malodorants in the headspace of a typical low VOC latex paint have been identified and categorized by potency, functional group and source. These results, combined with an understanding of the human olfactory system, have led to a better understanding of how to develop low odor coatings. Background and results of this study will be discussed.

Identification and classification of malodorants in low VOC architectural coatings

248th National Meeting (2014)

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