With the increasingly strict environmental regulations, water-based ink has become the mainstream choice in the printing industry due to its advantage of low volatile organic compounds. However, water-based ink is easy to produce a lot of foam in the process of production and use, which affects the overall printing quality and efficiency. Defoamers, as key additives, are also facing rapidly growing market demand.

The main cause of water-based ink foam problem is that water-based ink uses water as the solvent, and its surface tension is high. It is easy to get a lot of air involved in the process of high-speed mixing, pumping or printing, thus forming foam. However, the appearance of a large number of foam will lead to white spots, missed printing or uneven coating on the printed matter, and even damage the printing equipment in serious cases.   

Different from traditional solvent based inks, water-based ink systems have higher requirements for the compatibility and durability of defoamers, so water-based ink defoamers can quickly eliminate foam, and can effectively inhibit the repeated generation of foam in the printing process.

With the development and promotion of environmental policies, the process of replacing solvent based inks with water-based inks is also accelerating globally.

Especially in areas such as food packaging printing, higher standard requirements have been put forward for ink defoamers.

In the future, with the emergence of innovative products such as nano defoaming technology and bio based defoamers, the water-based ink defoamer market will develop towards a more efficient and green direction.