Details:
Summary:
Resins, colorants, solvents and additives are the main components that are used to formulate printing inks. Some of these chemicals contaminate the soil, water and environment when released into landfills, water streams and atmosphere. These ingredients even create potential health hazards upon contact with the human body. These problems and particularly the volatile price of petroleum are main reasons to look for new resources for making more environmentally friendly printing inks. Soybean protein and soybean oil are potential renewable raw materials for this replacement. Soy oil is already successfully implemented in lithographic printing processes, including litho inks for printing newspapers, books and magazines. There is a lack of information about soy protein use in inks. In this research, soy protein was used as a resin for water-based inkjet ink formulations. Also, an acrylic water-based inkjet ink was formulated in order to compare with soy ink. Both of them were printed onto plain paper with a Dimatix inkjet printer. Properties of these inks were compared before and after printing. The soy-based inkjet ink showed better results in some of the tests.