Wherever paint is applied and solvents are introduced into a process, pollutants are produced. That's why the new emission reduction limits apply to all industries that paint and coat. A four-year transition period began last December, which may be shortened depending on how long it takes to transpose the EU requirement into national law. The member states are allowed to move within bandwidths, for example between 8 and 30 grams per square meter for existing equipment in the passenger car sector. Some of these currently achieve emission values of up to 65 grams.
Depending on whether a country tends toward the upper or lower limit value, plant operators will have to react to a greater or lesser extent.For new plants with state-of-the-art technology, stricter VOC limits are not a problem. The situation is quite different for existing plants, of which an estimated 60 percent worldwide are more than 20 years old. In Europe, the average age is around 22 years.
Read more about this in the magazine for surface technology - or right here on oberflaeche.de!