At present, the market demand for metalworking fluid with low odor, no skin irritation, low sensitivity and no formaldehyde is growing. It can be said that the demand for providing metalworking fluid with lower maintenance requirements and longer service life is more urgent than ever. This metalworking fluid ensures better corrosion control of the product, reduces maintenance requirements, and prevents bacterial and fungal growth. More importantly, these metalworking fluids pay more attention to the health and safety of workers who use them.
The traditional way for enterprises to reduce the microbial content in metalworking fluid is to add registered bactericides. Fungicides can prolong the service life of processing fluid by inhibiting the growth of bacteria and fungal organisms. Without bactericides, these organisms will eventually degrade a variety of chemical components in the processing fluid, thus ultimately reducing the performance of the processing fluid. Today, because customers have put forward higher requirements for safety and environmental protection, and local regulatory departments have also further put forward strict requirements, many bactericides that were widely used have been, are being, or will be stopped using, including hexahydro-1,3,5-tris - (2-hydroxyethyl) - (s) - triazine and other formaldehyde concentrated bactericides.
Discontinuation of these bactericides will significantly shorten the life of metalworking fluids. Therefore, metalworking fluid users usually hope to reduce the microbial content through other safer and environmentally friendly technologies, thus extending the service life, which brings great challenges to the entire industry. A good way to solve this problem is to select additives that can prevent microbial degradation or improve the auxiliary bactericidal performance. The typical example of the latter is to add specific amino alcohols, which can not only improve the bactericidal performance, but also prevent corrosion and achieve better PH control.
An important industry trend in metal processing industry is to select metal alloy aluminum for manufacturing and processing. The advantage of aluminum is that it has high strength weight ratio and corrosion resistance, but the disadvantage is that aluminum alloys are prone to rust under high alkaline PH value. Primary amine products (such as Dow Chemical's CORRGUARD EXT) can help the formula designer reduce the total alkalinity in the metalworking fluid, making the product more suitable for processing aluminum. It can also help formula designers to design products suitable for multiple metals, or customize products for special alloys. Such primary amine technology provides full flexibility for various metal cutting, forming and application.
