CCS Wednesday 10/15/2025 Dinner Seminar

Tickets $55/person

Food Included & Drinks Separate

Platinum sponsorship $350

Gold Sponsorship $200

Silver Sponsorship $100

Location: Houlihan’s – Westlake, OH

25651 Detroit Rd, Westlake, OH 44145

Agenda:

4:30-5:30PM Social Hour

5:30-6:00PM Order Dinner

6:00-6:45PM Technical Talk

6:45-7:30PM Commercial Talk

Technical Talk

Watching Paint Dry: Approaches to Track Drying and Defects in Coatings

Christopher L. Wirth, PhD, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Case Western Reserve University

Coatings are ubiquitous chemical products important to applications from automobiles to packaging. Following the application stage of a coating, rapid evaporation of solvent during the ‘flash’ stage induces both changes in rheology and flow fields that can produce a zoology of defects. Such defects are not only problematic for the aesthetics of the coating, but defects will also create deficiencies in mechanical, optical, and barrier properties. Our lab has worked to apply existing tools and develop new techniques that elucidate fundamental understanding of the drying process, with a particular focus on the dynamics that lead to defect formation. This seminar will summarize several projects from our lab that leverage non-invasive techniques to track and characterize defects in both transparent and opaque coatings. First, I will describe a project in which we developed a technique to track sag through the volume of an acrylic-based model automotive clear coat. From there, I will discuss more recent efforts in our lab that leverage image processing to probe defects in a wide range of coating materials, from polyurethane films to coatings of nanoparticle suspensions. Finally, I will touch on emerging work from our lab that uses Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to track drying fronts in opaque paints. Collectively, these vignettes provide an overview of our lab’s work in coatings, and how we aim to use non-invasive tools that track dynamic processes to provide insights into the impact of formulation and processing on performance.

Bio:

Chris Wirth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Following completion of his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), he was a research associate at PPG Industries, in conjunction with the Center for Complex Fluids Engineering at CMU. He then joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at KU Leuven, Belgium, as a postdoctoral scholar in the Soft Matter, Rheology and Technology Laboratory. After spending five years on the faculty at Cleveland State University, he moved to CWRU in January 2020. Currently, his lab is interested in the non-equilibrium dynamics of complex fluids and colloidal particles in crowded environments, with a growing interest in formulation engineering for energy and the sustainable manufacturing of coatings and films. He is a recipient of the Doctoral New Investigator Award and the Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant from the American Chemical Society and the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He currently serves as Cluster Lead for Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing for the new Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building (ISEB), a $300m, 189,000-square-foot building currently under construction on the CWRU campus. Projects in his lab are currently funded by the National Science Foundation and industry sources. More information about his group’s work can be found at: https://wirthlab.org/

Commercial Talk: Borchers Americas – subsidiary of Milliken & Company
Multi-Functional Dispersing Additive for the Wetting and Stabilization of Pigments
Dispersing agents are crucial to the development of color rich coatings. They improve the stability, performance and durability of coatings by preventing particle agglomeration and settling. While needed to wet and stabilize pigments they, at times, can negatively impact corrosion resistance and other performance properties. Selection of dispersant type is especially critical in waterborne systems where corrosion performance in Direct-to-Metal (DTM) applications can be a challenge. In this presentation we will discuss types of dispersants, advantages of dispersants in coatings and factors affecting dispersant efficiency. We will introduce a study that shows the pigment dispersion properties of acrylic- and alkyd-based, pigmented DTM coatings when formulated with Borchi® Gen 1750, a versatile dispersant technology. Performance as a function of dispersant choice, grind time and overall system compatibility will be presented, as well as a dispersant’s impact on color strength and corrosion resistance in final paint performance.