In the United States, soy inks are widely used in newspaper printing. One important reason is that the U.S. government wants to promote agricultural development, and the second is to respond to the US Environmental Protection Agency's restrictions on VOC emissions. In recent years, with the growing demand for environmental protection, soy ink has attracted the attention of people in the industry, and began to apply to packaging, catalogs, commercial printing and so on.
Environmental-friendly soy inks have gone through research and development and application for a long period of time. They have been used in large scale in the United States, Japan, and other countries. However, there are still few applications in China. There are technical factors, and a greater part of them. It is because of lack of understanding. This article introduced in detail the performance and type of this ink, and its application status and prospects in printing. Soy ink or vegetable ink is a vegetable oil such as salad oil, which has excellent fluidity and coloring properties, high transparency, vivid colors, easy color removal, low price, and good printing effect. It conforms to the standard specifications of printing inks. Of course, the biggest feature is the very good environmental performance.
Features and advantages
The PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) contained in the traditional ink composition is a volatile solvent that is harmful to the human body; the VOCs (volatile organic compounds) contained therein not only increase atmospheric pollution but also cause harm to the human body. At the same time, rising oil prices and the depletion of reserves require us to seek a new type of environmentally friendly material to replace the traditional ink composition.
Soybean ink came into being. It has the following characteristics and advantages:
Good environmental performance
Soybean oil contains soybean oil as a safe substance. It replaces part of the petroleum-based solvents, and contains low levels of PAHs. When used, it reduces emissions of VOCs, thereby reducing the harm to the environment and at the same time benefiting the health of manufacturers and users.
At the same time, the oil that traditional inks rely on is a non-renewable resource. With the depletion of use, the energy crisis continues to erupt, oil prices continue to rise, the petroleum industry begins to target renewable plant resources, soybean oil used in soybean ink is taken from natural , can be infinitely renewable, but also biodegradable, both from the use of resources or from an environmental point of view, than the traditional ink has unparalleled advantages.
Good deinking regeneration
Waste paper printed with soy ink is easily deinked and has less damage to the paper fibers. This characteristic of soy inks contributes to the recycling of recycled paper. Research at Western Michigan University, known in the United States as a papermaking technology, confirms this characteristic. More than 80% of paper used in newspapers is made of recycled paper. This feature of soy ink makes waste paper less wasteful when recycled and recycled, and has lower recovery costs and is highly competitive in the industry. The waste soybean ink residue after deinking treatment is relatively easy to be degraded, which is favorable for sewage treatment and control of discharge water quality.
Strong rub resistance
According to the U.S. Press Association, newspaper readers often get their hands dirty with ink while reading. This is because the ink on the substrate after printing using traditional inks is easily rubbed off. However, soy inks have a lot of solvents in this respect, and the content of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons is low. When they are used, emissions of VOCs are reduced, thereby reducing the harm to the environment and benefiting the health of manufacturers and users.
At the same time, the oil that traditional inks rely on is a non-renewable resource. With the depletion of use, the energy crisis continues to erupt, oil prices continue to rise, the petroleum industry begins to target renewable plant resources, soybean oil used in soybean ink is taken from natural , can be infinitely renewable, but also biodegradable, both from the use of resources or from an environmental point of view, than the traditional ink has unparalleled advantages.
Good deinking regeneration
Waste paper printed with soy ink is easily deinked and has less damage to the paper fibers. This characteristic of soy inks contributes to the recycling of recycled paper. Research at Western Michigan University, known in the United States as a papermaking technology, confirms this characteristic.
More than 80% of paper used in newspapers is made of recycled paper. This feature of soy ink makes waste paper less wasteful when recycled and recycled, and has lower recovery costs and is highly competitive in the industry. The waste soybean ink residue after deinking treatment is relatively easy to be degraded, which is favorable for sewage treatment and control of discharge water quality.
Strong rub resistance
According to the U.S. Press Association, newspaper readers often get their hands dirty with ink while reading. This is because the ink on the substrate after printing using traditional inks is easily rubbed off. However, soy ink has greatly improved in this area. Soybean ink itself is very resistant to friction, so that newspaper readers are not bothered by hand blacking, and there is no unpleasant irritating odor. As a result, soy ink plays an important role at this point and will lead to the formulation of ink quality standards for the printing industry.
Good light and heat resistance
Soybean ink has a boiling point much higher than that of petroleum. When the oil is heated by a laser printer or photocopier, it will not volatilize and stick to paper, nor will it contaminate machine parts.
Good printability
As the research, development and production technology of soybean ink is very mature, through the study of lithographic offset printing, the printing properties of soybean ink, including emulsifying properties, drying properties, and friction resistance, have been greatly improved.
Good overall performance
Soybean inks have a wide range of colors, rich colors and bright colors. A small amount of ink can exhibit the effects that a large number of traditional inks can exhibit. According to reports, the same amount of soybean ink can increase the printing amount by 10% to 15%, thereby reducing the printing cost. In addition, because the traditional ink contains organic compounds, in order to avoid causing environmental pollution, its disposal has always been a problem for ink manufacturing plants and printing plants. However, soy ink can be backfilled and mixed in new inks, which is not only conducive to environmental protection, but also reduces production costs.
Common soy ink
There are several types of environmentally friendly soy inks that are commonly seen on the market.
(1) Environmental Printing Soybean Ink (HP) Advanced Printing Ink Features: High-concentration, ultra-bright, super-resistant, quick-drying, and stable printability.
(2) Environmental Printing Soybean Ink (MP) Advanced Printing Ink Features: High concentration, super-resistant friction, quick-drying, stable printing adaptability.
(3) Environmental Printing Soy Ink (RP) Standard Printing Ink Features: Super anti-friction, quick-drying, stable printing adaptability. Different forms of printing should use different formulations of soy ink. Table 1 shows the soybean oil content in different printing ink applications.
Application status and prospect
Soybean ink has been used in Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries and regions for many years. It not only has the advantages of low pollution, low stickiness, and benefits for recycled paper printing to achieve environmental benefits, but also contributes to the establishment of a good image for manufacturers, and the market Occupancy is also rising year by year.
The application of soybean ink is the first to push the newspaper industry. There are about 10,000 newspapers in the United States. One-third of them have already used soy ink. In particular, more than 90% of the top 1500 large-scale daily newspapers have confirmed their effects and widely used soy inks.
In Japan, the application of soy ink has just started. Matsushita Electric Co., Ltd., as the largest user of soy ink in Japan, uses soy ink printing on its global electrical product packaging and brochures to show that the company pays attention to environmental protection. Since soy ink meets the current demand for environmental protection in Japan, it is believed that future usage will increase exponentially.
The use of soy ink is not yet mature in China, but with the improvement of the national quality, the increase in environmental awareness, and the further implementation of the concept of the Beijing Olympics Green Olympics in 2008, has created a good environment for the promotion and application of environmentally friendly soybean ink. Opportunity.
Reprinted from: Ink Information