Alkyd Resin

alkyd resin, a complex oil-modified polyester that serves as the film-forming agent in some paints and clear coatings. Developed in the 1920s, alkyd-based enamel paints were once one of the most important types of surface coating. Owing to their incorporation of volatile organic solvents and to their low durability on exterior surfaces, they have yielded preeminence to newer polymer systems (particularly water-based latex paints). Nevertheless, alkyds are still used in low-performance industrial coatings and in interior paints.

The name alkyd, formed from alkyl (a chemical abbreviation for alcohol) and acid, denotes the chemical origin of the resin, which is commonly based on a polymerization reaction between an alcohol, such as glycerol, and a dicarboxylic acid or its anhydride—for instance, phthalic anhydride. Glycerol and phthalic anhydride react to form the polyester glyptal. The reaction can be represented as follows:

When an unsaturated oil such as tung oil, linseed oil, or dehydrated castor oil is added to the ester-forming compounds, the result is a branched polyester containing fatty-acid side groups. When such a coating agent is applied to a surface, the oil portion of the polyester undergoes a cross-linking reaction in the presence of oxygen from the surrounding air as it dries, yielding a tack-free film.

A typical alkyd paint consists of the oil-modified polyester to form the coating film, a solvent such as hexane or mineral spirits to aid in application, metal naphthenates to catalyze the drying reaction, and pigment to provide colour and hide the coated surface. The oil content of the formulation can vary. A long-oil alkyd contains 60 percent fatty acid by weight; a medium-oil alkyd contains 40–60 percent fatty acid; and a short-oil alkyd contains less than 40 percent. The use of alkyd coatings is decreasing partly because of regulations restricting the release of volatile organic content into the atmosphere. In order to meet such regulations, alkyds may be made water-reducible by the addition of free acid groups to the molecules. In the presence of a base such as ammonia, these groups allow the polymers to be solubilized in water rather than in organic solvents. Usually a cosolvent such as 2-butoxyethanol is necessary to maintain a stable solution, and under these conditions the ester linkages that are the basis of the alkyd polymer chain are vulnerable to breakage by hydrolysis. In this case special monomers are often chosen to give the chain hydrolytic stability.

Within the surface-coatings industry, the name polyester, when used alone, indicates a polyester free of natural-oil modifiers. Such polyesters are used extensively in coatings. The polymer can have a linear structure, but it is often branched, and it is usually in a relatively low-molecular-weight form that can be cross-linked to form a high-performance film. When the polyester is synthesized in the presence of an excess of alcohol, it tends to have hydroxyl end-groups on the molecules, and these molecules can be cross-linked through the hydroxyl groups by reaction with isocyanate, epoxy, and melamine compounds. If an excess of organic acid is present during polymerization, the polyester will have carboxyl end-groups, and these can become sites for cross-linking with epoxy, melamine, and amine groups. Polyesters with free-acid groups attached to their chains can be solubilized to a water-reducible form, as is the case with alkyds. Again, the hydrolytic stability of the resultant system must be considered.