The increasing concerns being raised over the environmental degradation and soaring pollution levels are fueling the demand for water-borne coatings across the world. This is because these coatings are more eco-friendly in comparison to the other coatings such as powder coatings and solvent-borne coatings as they contain fewer quantities of the harmful emission producing volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Furthermore, the governments of many countries have enacted stringent regulations in the past few years for mitigating the rising emission levels, which has, in turn, caused a huge rise in the usage of water-borne coatings around the world. 

The other key factor propelling the requirement for water-borne coatings is their ability to provide harder coatings than the other powder and solvent-borne coatings. In addition to this, these coatings are highly weather-resistant and have less odor and excellent durability. Because of these factors, the popularity of these coatings is increasing rapidly throughout the world. As a result, the global water-borne coatings market is predicted to register substantial growth in the future years. A popular trend currently being observed in the industry is the rising usage of heat and temperature-resistant water-borne coatings.

The most widely used types of water-borne coatings are— alkyd, epoxy, polyurethane, and acrylic coatings. Based on acrylic, the water-borne acrylic coatings use water as a film forming agent. These coatings are primarily used in industrial and architectural applications. Speaking about the water-borne polyurethane coatings, they are mainly based on water, polyurethane, and resins such as adduct, pre-polymer, aliphatic isocyanurate, and biuret. On the other hand, the water-borne epoxy coatings consist of water and epoxy as film forming agents.

Coming to the water-borne alkyd coatings, they have water and alkyd as film forming agents including various types of resins such as polybasic acid, polyhydric alcohol, water, and fatty acid. The water-borne coatings producing factories use spray booths equipped with air movement and heating devices for reducing the curing time in order to increase the production of the coatings. This is because the curing time for these coatings is generally longer in comparison to the time required for solvent-borne coatings.

Furniture, plastic, wood, and printing inks are some of the major end-user industries of water-borne coatings. Furthermore, the major application areas of these coatings are remodeling and construction activities, especially in the developing nations of Middle East and Asia-Pacific. These coatings are extensively used in exterior and interior paints, trims and facades of architectural industries, and doors. Out of all applications, the usage of these coatings will be considerably high in architectural applications and rise rapidly in automotive applications in the forthcoming years, as per the forecast of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India. 

Thus, it is pretty clear from the above paragraphs that the popularity of the water-borne coatings will eclipse that of the power and solvent-borne coatings in the upcoming years, primarily on account of the greater environment-friendliness and functional characteristics of these coatings. Moreover, these coatings are extremely suitable for use in a plethora of end-user industries such as marine, automotive, wood, and architecture.