What Are the General Uses of Coating And Linings?

Paints and coatings are used in many different ways and serve many different purposes. They may protect the substrate from a corrosive environment by forming a barrier. They may provide easily cleanable surfaces (e.g. a decontaminative coatings in a nuclear facility). They may prevent contamination of a material by the container (e.g. the lining of tank cars transporting a highly concentrated, high purity caustic where iron contamination is a problem). Coatings may provide insulation of fire protection. They are also used in accordance with the underwriters’ colour codes to call attention to important features such as safety, fire control areas and so forth. Coatings have many uses, only one of which is to beautify. 

What Types of Coatings Are Commonly Used?

Generic coating types take their mane from the resin in their formulation. Thus a coating may be referred to as a vinyl or an epoxy, although it may be highly modified, or in some cases, it may be combination of two or more different resins, one of which will usually be predominant. For example, vinyl resins are often modified with alkyd or acrylic resins, or coal tar pitch may be used in conjunction with epoxy resins. Such modifications produce the thousands of combinations today. The most common generic types of coatings are:

• Acrylics
• Alkyds
• Bituminous
• Chlorinated rubbers
• Epoxy amine
• Epoxy coal tar
• Epoxy ester
• Epoxy phenolic
• Epoxy polyamide
• Inorganic and organic zincs
• Silicones 
• Urethanes
• Vinyls