Advantages and Uses of Powder Coating for Chemical Storage Systems

Powder coating is a dry finishing process that uses powder to create a high-quality finish on surfaces. The coating is applied with a combination of electrostatic charge and heat curing process. Powder coatings are available in thousands of colors, and are as versatile as liquid paint, while offering some advantages over the traditional painting process.

What is Powder Coating?

Powder coating is a free-floating, dry powder applied to metal surfaces such as appliances, metal extrusions, industrial metal, automotive metals and other metal substrates that need coating. The powder is similar to a thermoplastic or a thermoset polymer. When applied and heated, the powder flows like a paint, creating a tough coating over the object.

How Powder Coating Differs from Paint

The coating process is similar to a painting process, except the “paint” is a dry powder instead of a liquid. Unlike conventional liquid paint, powder coating has no need for a solvent to keep the binder and filler parts in liquid form. A quality finished metal surface is usually good enough. 

This coating is applied electrostatically, which causes the powder to adhere to surfaces via an electrostatic charge. The coated object is then cured in an oven, to allow it to flow and form a “skin” over the object being coated. This creates a hard finish that is often tougher than conventional liquid paint.

Advantages of powder coating include:

• The powder can be recovered for re-use.
• Powder coating does not generate volatile organic compounds, which means no VOC is disposed of.
• Depending on the chemistry of the powder, the coating can be significantly more durable than paints.

Some disadvantages of powder coating when compared to paints:

• Powder coating has less of a leveling effect than paint and can create an “orange peel” effect of hills and valleys in the surface.
• The curing process requires high temperatures, which is more energy intensive than letting paint dry naturally.

When and How Poly Processing Uses Powder Coating

Poly Processing’s standard is to galvanize small objects and spray-paint large objects. However, we do perform powder or epoxy coating on request, or by specification.

Items we can powder coat include:

• Smaller metal parts such as seismic clips.
• Small saddles.
• Small metal cone stands and baskets, up to eight feet in diameter..
• Most other stands and objects up to eight feet in diameter.

Powder coating comes in thousands of available colors. If you have a specific color in mind, powder coating can be mixed much like a paint.

If you have questions about powder coating and whether it might be right for your needs, contact a chemical storage tank expert to get your questions answered.