Covestro is a polymer materials manufacturer who has recently launched a new variant of its Impranil polyurethane dispersion technology. Covestro designed this technology with the intention for it to have a range of applications within the technical textiles sector.

The new design is called Impranil CQ DLU, and it is an aliphatic polyester carbonate polyether polyurethane (PU) dispersion for textile coating. According to Covestro, the new version of the technology can perform the same functions and tasks as the primary version, however, this time 34% of the carbon contained in the technology, comes from plants. This is the innovative part which lends the technology the CQ part of its name. This stands for ‘circular intelligence’ and highlights that more than 25% of the technology uses bio-based raw materials.

The technology was designed originally to be applied to the company’s Insqin waterborne PU technology and at this point, the Impranil DLU successfully achieved aqueous textile coating, whilst also eliminating the need for solvents. The original creation did manage to replicate the performance, including the softness, of solvent-based materials and it was also capable of being adapted to a variety of applications concerning synthetic materials for sports articles, technical textiles, car interiors and bags. However, Covestro wanted to take this further and developed the new technology which now also shows excellent hydrolysis resistance, very good lightfastness, high tensile strength and scratch resistance. Furthermore, Covestro has stated that the coatings have a pleasant feel and good alkali resistance.

Covestro said in a statement, "Climate protection requires the industry to gradually move away from petroleum and other fossil raw materials and instead use raw materials from renewable sources. Sustainability is increasingly becoming a key purchasing criterion not only for the industry, but also for brand owners and consumers. Customers can now replace Impranil DLU one-to-one with Impranil CQ DLU in thereby easily achieving an additional increase in textile coating sustainability."

The Head of global textile coatings at Covestro, Torsten Pohl, commented, "With the innovation Impranil CQ DLU as part of our Impranil CQ portfolio, we are now enabling the textile coatings industry to take the next step towards more sustainability through the increased use of renewable resources.”