Wetting Agents for the Paper Industry

Surfactants with wetting properties are applied in a variety of formulations. They are added as a component where the fast wetting of substrates is mandatory. BTC Europe’s wetting agents are derived from natural and synthetic alcohols. The use of wetting agents is needed in cleaning applications and chemical-technical applications like in emulsion polymerisation processes. The performance of the wetting property and the compatibility with other inert of a formulation is the decisive criteria. The wetting performance is described by several methods. For wetting a fibre or cotton the method EN 1772 is used. For wetting a surface the measurement of contact angle is used. In general the measurement of the dynamic surface tension informs about the wetting properties and such values are helpful to select the appropriate surfactant for the requested application.