What Is Amine Blush-Protective Industrial Polymers

You need to keep your industrial floors in peak condition to continually support your strategic business objectives. Damaged floors can reduce employee morale and plant productivity, as well as becoming a safety issue.

What is Amine Blush?

When epoxy coatings are applied in adverse conditions (usually high humidity), they can cure with an unintended hazy or greasy finish, known as an amine blush. This same result can also occur in areas of high CO2 levels. So understanding and controlling atmospheric conditions is very important for your epoxy floor coating project.

This Condition Needs Immediate Correction

Amine blush makes your floor look terrible. This condition also negatively effects bonding and performance of your floor coating system. But, more importantly, the morale of your employees will decline if they have to work in this type of environment.

Here are five ways amine blush can impact your workers:

Reduced light reflectivity effects worker productivity
Walking safety is decreased with compromised slip resistance
Abrasion resistance is reduced and causes premature floor wear
Pride of work is effected with the poor aesthetic look of your floor
Embedded boundary markers are less visible for efficient traffic flow

Removing amine blush will extend the timeline of your flooring project. But, you need to correct this situation now.

How Can my Floor be Fixed

You can’t just coat over amine blush. The proper solution for blush removal is using either denatured alcohol or a vinegar wipe followed by a clean water wipe or rinse. However, most applicator contractors will decide to sand the epoxy to be sure all of this amine blush contaminant is gone. Then, additional coats of either epoxy or polyurethane can be properly applied.

Work with Your Application Contractor to Avoid Amine Blush

As an end user, how much does it cost to delay your production line to correct amine blush? Upfront, be sure to talk with your application contractor about your unique flooring environment. Work as a team to insure you have a great looking floor the first time. Your employees will thank you.

Need more information?

Read our white paper ‘The Amine Blush “Phenomenon” – Getting the Finish You Deserve from Your New Epoxy Floor’.

Author
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Sean Walsh

Marketing & Product Development Manager at Protective Industrial Polymers

Sean Walsh is the Marketing & Product Development Manager of Protective Industrial Polymers, a company that manufactures high-performance resinous floor coatings for industrial manufacturing environments, which has a keen focus on developing unique solutions for managing electrostatic, microbial, chemical, explosion and safety risk concerns. He has over 15 years of marketing and sales support experience in the protective coatings industry. Prior to that, Sean worked in the construction industry, specializing in contract and project management for commercial and industrial floor and roof projects. Sean enjoys working closely with PIP’s sales and management group to develop and market new flooring products and systems to address end-user’s unique requirements. You can follow Sean on LinkedIn, email him at swalsh@protectpoly.com, or contact Protective
Industrial Polymers at 866-361-3331.