| In an effort to substitute methylene chloride (dichloromethane) with a less toxic solvent, the purpose of this study was to evaluate alternative strippers in furniture refinishing facilities.; Dichloromethane (DCM) is mainly used as a solvent in paint strippers and coating removers.; This pollution prevention study focused on safer substitutes for DCM to reduce the impact on the environment and human health. In order to find substitutes, laboratory evaluation of the performance of alternative chemical strippers was performed and then compared to the performance of a traditional chemical stripper containing DCM.; The effectiveness of the five alternative chemical strippers was evaluated by comparing it with that of a DCM based stripper containing 15--20% DCM used as base line(Stripper F). SI #4 Coating Remover (Stripper A) contains more than 67% N-methylen-2-pyrrolinone (NMP), Peel Away 7(Stripper B) has 20--50% NMP, Safety Peel (Stripper C) has less than 30% NMP.; Force 9 Heavy Duty Cleaner (Stripper D) contains dimethyle adipate and triethyl phosphate and Take off Green (Stripper E) contains 15--40 % acetone and methanol.; The laboratory evaluation of paint strippers was performed based on the ASTM (The American Society for Testing and Materials) D6189-97 test method of standard practice for evaluating the efficiency of chemical removers for organic coatings with modification. Both qualitative and quantitative tests were performed with the modified test method.; In the qualitative test, Stripper A had the best efficiency for all paints and woods followed by strippers B, C, E, F, and D. All strippers worked best on oil-based paint followed by polyurethane and water-based paints. The six strippers had the best results on maple followed by pine, poplar and oak.; In the quantitative gravimetric test, Stripper A had the best efficiency of 77.2% for all paints and woods followed by 75.4% for Stripper B, 73.5% for Stripper C, 73.2 for stripper D, 72.90% for stripper F and lastly 71.6% for stripper E. Results on average were the same in the qualitative test.; In the ANOVA for the results of the coating removal efficiency, because the model was not significant (significance probability p = 0.7226), it could be concluded that all the paint strippers were not significantly different in terms of efficiency. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
