IPA, commonly used as a fount additive, has a number of names, isopropyl alcohol and isopropanol perhaps being the most common.

Alcohol damping was only introduced about 20 or 30 years ago but now many printers are moving away from it; some of the reasons are outlined below.

Why stop using alcohol?

IPA is a Volatile Organic Compound, or VOC - it is carbon-based and evaporates very readily. This evaporation gives rise to what are referred as VOC emissions.

Breathing in IPA as it evaporates in the press room, or getting it on your skin as you work, is harmful to health, causing headaches and concentration problems, skin irritation and more serious, long term problems. Getting rid of it makes a much healthier working environment for your staff. Even reducing it by a few percent can make a substantial difference, not just to the atmosphere but also to consumption and therefore costs.

It’s also a fire hazard, being extremely flammable.

VOC emissions cause a number of wider environmental problems in addition to health problems within the workplace. They combine with nitrogen oxides in the air to form low level ozone, which is a respiratory irritant, contributing to asthma and similar health problems. They also contribute to climate change, and some are very potent greenhouse gases (methane is one of these, and is generated in landfill as the content rots down).

If you can reduce your VOC emissions, you are making a very valuable improvement to your environmental performance. Controlling emissions by using good housekeeping measures helps, reducing the amount of alcohol used helps even more – and stopping using it helps most of all.

Making IPA uses non-renewable resources – generally petroleum or natural gas deposits. Such resources need conserving as much as possible.

Lastly, there may well be financial incentives. New markets can be opened up to customers concerned about VOC emissions, insurance companies may look more favourably on a printer whose fire risk is reduced (this, of course, depends a great deal on what else you are doing on your site), and there is the cost of IPA itself.

Working without it

IPA plays a number of roles in the fount, and understanding these makes it easier to manage changing over. It helps with water transport, improving wetting; reduces ink build up and calcification on the rollers, prevents foaming, and generally makes the press more forgiving.

IPA also masks problems, which then come to light when you stop using it. It is these problems that are often the real issue when changing over: they are not caused by the change, they just start to show. Going back to using IPA to overcome them is perhaps the printing equivalent of turning the radio up to stop that annoying rattle from your car engine.

There are many different considerations when reducing or eliminating alcohol – the type of press you have, the inks and chemicals you are using, your rollers and your water quality to name just a few.

• Commitment. Everyone in the company needs to be committed to the project: the machine minders to be committed to success and the changes needed in the way they work, to the effort needed to make the change; the management to be committed to support everyone on the shop floor and to allow the time needed to make it work.

• Maintenance. This must be regular and consistent, not simply carried out when there is a gap in production. Rollers will need particular attention to keep them in good condition and properly set.

• Involve everyone. The rollers, plates, ink, fount, washes all have to work together – so involve all your suppliers to ensure they are compatible.

• Control the water. The hardness and pH must be absolutely consistent to enable consistent print results. As the supply of water is variable, with some water companies even switching source several times a day, reverse osmosis may be needed. Fount must be very clean, and so efficient filtration will be needed to remove contamination from paper coatings, inks etc. This will also extend its life, and reduce disposal costs.

• Measure everything, accurately: conductivity of the water, pH, temperature, fount dosing.

The rewards

In addition to a healthier working environment and cost savings, one major benefit of printing without alcohol is better print quality. Colours are brighter, cleaner and the ink has a much better gloss. Drying is often quicker, and make-ready is also faster, reducing waste and thus costs.

Presses have to be very carefully maintained when running alcohol-free, and everything kept immaculately clean – which adds further benefits of its own as well cared for presses will give better service.