The development history of environmentally friendly ink

The environmentally friendly inks launched in the Chinese market can be divided into the following categories in chronological order.
Solvent based ink
Ordinary solvent inks generally contain aromatic hydrocarbon solvents (toluene, xylene). Some international ink companies were the first to launch non aromatic solvent inks in the Chinese market, using alcohols, esters, ethers, ketones, and gasoline as solvents to eliminate the potential hazards caused by aromatic solvents.
The solvent based ink used for flexographic printing is basically free of aromatic hydrocarbons, but there are still many volatile organic solvents that mainly affect the air quality in the printing workshop. The residual odor is now rare in printed materials, and there may be a small amount of odor present in composite printed materials, but it is basically undetectable in surface printed materials.
Water-based ink
Compared with solvent based inks, water-based inks have further improved their environmental performance. It not only does not contain aromatic solvents, but also greatly reduces VOCs, but still cannot achieve zero content and still contains small amounts of alcohols, ethers, and even organic amines. It has a relatively small impact on the environment, mainly polluting the air in the workshop.
UV ink
UV offset printing ink does not contain volatile organic compounds, which is a big step forward and safer than water-based ink. But its drying is achieved through ultraviolet radiation. Ultraviolet radiation has the potential to induce skin cancer and convert oxygen into ozone. Therefore, the drying device of the printing machine should be equipped with exhaust equipment to expel ozone outdoors. Water based UV ink, like water-based ink, contains a small amount of volatile organic solvents. Compared to ordinary UV offset printing ink, its environmental performance is even worse.
In fact, the definition of environmentally friendly ink is only relative, but for the most widely used offset printing ink, the contribution of environmentally friendly ink to environmental protection has never stopped. With the successive introduction of a series of environmentally friendly inks such as non aromatic solvent inks (such as alcohol and ester soluble inks), water-based inks, UV inks, soybean oil-based inks, etc., the environmental protection of inks is gradually deepening.