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De­vel­op­ment of a self con­fin­ing laser pro­cess for the re­moval of tem­po­rary floor care prod­ucts

IGF 16241 BG

The ap­pli­ca­tion of tem­po­rary poly­mer coat­ings on elas­tic floor­ings is an im­por­tant pre­req­ui­site for in­creas­ing their dura­bil­i­ty and for as­sur­ing op­ti­mal per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics. Poly­mer coat­ings lead to a bet­ter clean­abil­i­ty and a high­er abra­sion re­sis­tance of floor­ings. Such coat­ings have to be re­placed after a cer­tain time de­pend­ing on the wear level by means of strip­ping and coat­ing. For strip­ping cur­rent­ly wa­ter-based sys­tems with a high chem­i­cal load are em­ployed. The ex­tend­ed dry­ing times re­quired be­fore the fol­low­ing coat­ing steps cause de­lays in the op­er­at­ing sched­ule of the build­ing op­er­a­tors.

To over­come these draw­backs an ef­fec­tive and eco­nom­i­cal self-lim­it­ing pro­ce­dure to re­move tem­po­rary floor­care prod­ucts from elas­tic floor­ings by means of an in­frared laser (Nd:YAG, 1064 nm) has been de­vel­oped with­in an FRT-pro­ject. A dam­age of the top re­spec­tive­ly wear layer of the floor­ing by the laser treat­ment is pre­vent­ed by mod­i­fy­ing the floor­care dis­per­sion in such a way that it com­plete­ly ab­sorbs and re­flects the in­ci­dent laser beam. These phys­i­cal pro­cess­es lead to a tar­get­ed local evap­o­ra­tion of the poly­mer coat­ing above the floor­ing. The mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the floor­care dis­per­sions oc­curs by ad­di­tion of spe­cial in­frared ab­sorbers and in­frared re­flec­tors, which show max­i­mum ab­sorp­tion re­spec­tive­ly re­flec­tion in the wave­length range of the laser used. The self-lim­it­ing char­ac­ter of the de­coat­ing pro­ce­dure de­vel­oped is also sup­port­ed by spe­cial (in­tu­mes­cent) ma­te­ri­als. By the laser ra­di­a­tion these are con­vert­ed into car­bon diox­ide and water and thus con­tribute to a “burst­ing” of the sur­round­ing poly­mer lay­ers. The new laser pro­cess is water and wastew­a­ter free and needs in con­trast to con­ven­tion­al strip­ping no harsh chem­i­cals. By elim­i­nat­ing the long dry­ing times re­quired cur­rent­ly in the aque­ous strip­ping, the re­new­al of the floor coat­ing may occur im­me­di­ate­ly after strip­ping. The work­ing se­quence of the build­ing op­er­a­tor is there­fore dis­turbed only slight­ly, so that the ac­cep­tance of the laser clean­ing pro­cess by cus­tomers of clean­ing ser­vice en­ter­pris­es will in­crease and new mar­ket po­ten­tials can be opened up. At the same time, areas that are in­ac­ces­si­ble by ma­chine can eco­nom­i­cal­ly be stripped be­cause an ef­fec­tive strip­ping with much less man­pow­er is pos­si­ble com­pared to con­ven­tion­al aque­ous pro­cess­es. The re­search work was per­formed by the wfk – Clean­ing Tech­nol­o­gy In­sti­tute in Krefeld in co­op­er­a­tion with the De­part­ment for Laser Tech­nol­o­gy at the RWTH Aachen Uni­ver­si­ty (LLT) and the Re­search In­sti­tute of Leather and Plas­tic Sheet­ing gGmbH (FILK) Freiberg.

The IGF-pro­ject 16241 BG of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Europäische Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft Reini­gungs- und Hy­gien­etech­nolo­gie e.V., Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, D-47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gramme „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und –en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Tech­nol­o­gy (BMWi) due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.

 

 

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.

The IGF-pro­ject IGF 16241 BG of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Europäische Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft Reini­gungs- und Hy­gien­etech­nolo­gie e.V., Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, 47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gram „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und -en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.