Stain-eating flooring

#The invention relates to coatings for hardened surfaces. In particular, the invention relates to a coating or a finish capable of removing or eliminating stains. Compositions of the invention are useful in coating floors, counters, walls, or other surfaces that commonly suffer from staining. Restaurant, grocery, and hospital floors in particular benefit from compositions of the invention. Coatings of the invention are prepared by adding an oxidizing agent to a coating composition either at the time of blending of the coating or at the point of use of the coating. In preferred embodiments the coating is applied before a stain occurs thus rendering staining of the surface under the coating virtually impossible.

#Food and beverage stains are an onging problem on floor and counter finishes, particularly those in restaurants and grocery stores. Food products such as mustard, ketchup, coffee, and cola are commonly found in supermarkets where floor surfaces such as tile floors are employed. When they are spilled they can cause semi-permanent dark yellow, brown, or red stains to the coating itself or the underlying substrate. Workers in these situations are often unable to immediately clean up a spill that can result in discoloration of the floor finish. These stains can be very difficult to remove using traditional cleaning and laundering techniques, and are especially difficult to remove from floor tiles. For example, when mustard is spilled on vinyl composite tiles coated with a typical floor finish, both the finish and tiles may stain. Removal of such stains may require recoating the floor or even replacing the stained tiles. This can require substantial time and expenditure. While some polymers incorporated into a floor finish are synthesized using an oxidizer catalyst, the level of residual oxidizer present when that polymer is formulated into a floor finish composition is insufficient to decolorize stains on the coating.

#While stains are eventually removable from the finish via specialty cleaners, these cleaners often do so at the expense of damage to the floor finish, making it necessary to recoat the floor. The time and expense of repairing the floor damage represents a substantial expenditure on the facility's part. Therefore, a need exists for a means of preventing or eliminating stains on floor finishes without causing damage to the finish.

#For the following defined terms, these definitions shall be applied, unless a different definition is given in the claims or elsewhere in this specification.

#In this application, a “hardenable” coating composition is a composition that can be applied to a surface and then dried, cured, polymerized or otherwise converted to form a durable coating on the surface.

#In this application, an “effective amount” of an oxidizing agent is an amount sufficient to at least partially decolorize a stain when applied to a test stain and allowed to stand for one hour at room temperature. A suitable test stain can be formed by applying prepared mustard to white vinyl composite tiles coated with a metal-catalyzed acrylic floor finish and wiping away excess mustard. Decolorization can be evaluated by visual observation of the stain under average overhead fluorescent illumination.