Beijing drafting compulsory VOC limits for architecture coatings and adhesives

On September 27, 2021, the Beijing Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau released the revised draft of the compulsory local standard- “Limit standards of volatile organic compounds of architectural coatings and adhesives” (hereinafter referred as “Standard”) (DB 11/3005-2017) and started to solicit opinions. The final date for comments is October 28, 2021. The Standard is applied for the production, sales, usage of all kinds of architecture coatings and adhesives in Beijing. And the Standard stipulates the classification of related products, limit standards of volatile organic compounds, test methods, inspections rules, labeling and the implementation of the standard. In this revision, regulated items has been expanded and further subdivided, and the limit standards of volatile organic compounds has been tightened.

Addition and subdivision of regulated items

Addition of regulated items: Decorative panel coating, solvent-free architectural anticorrosion coating, and fire retardant coating are newly added into the regulated coating types.

Subdivision of regulated items: Adhesives are further divided into interior decoration adhesives and architecture adhesives, and the VOC limits are set separately for each. In addition, the solvent-based adhesives are newly classified into chloroprene rubber, Styrene-butadiene-styrene block copolymers, polyurethane, acrylic and others, instead of SBS adhesives, acrylic acid ester adhesive and others of the current standard. The solvent-free adhesives are subdivided into 8 types after MS adhesives, α-Cyanoacrylic acids adhesives, thermoplastics are newly added.

Tightening the VOC limits

The VOC limits for exterior wall coating, interior wall coating, solvent-based floor coating and adhesives have been tightened. The content limits for exterior wall coating, interior wall coating, decorative panel coating, solvent-based floor coating and architectural anticorrosion coating are stricter than the compulsory national standard (GB), and the content limit for architectural anticorrosion coating is even stricter than the national recommended standard (GB/T). For the adhesives, 9 types out of 20 types are stricter than the compulsory national standard, and the rest keep the same with national standard.

The following are some of the revised VOC limits for architectural coatings (the GB in parentheses are national standard limits for reference).

Wall coating

• Water-based coating
  • Exterior wall coating≦80 g/L
  • Interior wall coating≦50 g/L
  • Putty≦10 g/kg
• Decorative panel coating
  • Water-based decorative panel coating
    • Synthetic resin emulsion≦100 g/L（GB：≦120 g/L）
    • Others≦200 g/L（GB：≦250 g/L）
  • Solvent-based decorative panel coating
    • Effect pigment contained coating≦560 g/L（GB:≦760 g/L）
    • Others（GB：≦580 g/L）

Architectural anticorrosion coating

• Water-based≦150 g/L
• Solvent-based≦420 g/L
• Solvent-free≦60 g/L

Fire retardant coating

• Water-based≦80 g/L
• Solvent-based≦420 g/L

For the original text of the Standard, please refer to the following URL (in simplified Chinese).
http://sthjj.beijing.gov.cn/bjhrb/index/xxgk69/zfxxgk43/fdzdgknr2/hbjfw/11125980/index.html