Increased awareness of environmental concerns around the globe has led to stringent requirements to reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) levels in a wide variety of manufactured products. As one of the most impacted industries, the paints and coatings market closely monitors VOC emissions and the use of hazardous materials in most countries. The use of additives is a common practice in the paint and coating industry for improving processing and material costs and for achieving the desired engineered properties of the final product. What caused fillers to be added to materials in the first place was probably the quest for lower costs. Fillers were inexpensive, thus using them would make the material cheaper. Nowadays, as the following discussion shows, costs reduction, though still critical, is not the most important consideration for using fillers in formulating composite materials.
展开▼
