Mannich Bases from DDChem

Written by Shaimaa El-Fayyoumy on 8 September 2021Time to read: 2 minutes

Founded in 2003, DDChem is the Italian manufacturer of hardeners for epoxy resins, epoxy systems and hot melt polyamides. De Monchy International delivers, amongst other, Mannich Bases from DDChem s.r.l. which is used in epoxy systems, for example as hardener for flooring. This blog takes a closer look at the Mannich reaction, its properties and applications.

What is the Mannich Reaction?

The Mannich Reaction is an organic reaction which consists of an amino alkylation of an acidic proton placed next to a carbonyl functional group by formaldehyde and a primary or secondary amine or ammonia. The final product is a β-amino-carbonyl compound also known as a Mannich base.
DDChem produces formulated Mannich Bases starting from phenols, amines and formaldehyde in order to provide a wide range of products for a number of applications.

Mannich Base reaction

Product Applications

Mannich-based products are highly reactive curing agents for epoxy systems with excellent performance even at low temperatures. Used as accelerators to replace Salicylic acid and other accelerators, they are excellent curing agents for flooring as they do not show surface greasiness even at low temperatures and/or high humidity conditions.

Mannich bases are applied as:

Hardeners for flooring at low temperature and/or high humidity conditions
Adhesion promoters
Accelerators for epoxy systems

The Physical and Chemical Characteristics of Mannich bases are:

Excellent reactivity (from 0-10°C)
Great acceleration effect
Excellent self-levelling properties with different types of poorly prepared substrates
Good application on wet and cold substrate with great adhesion on wet/moist concrete
Low viscosity

Viscosity Profile

As described in the characteristics, Mannich bases have a low viscosity. In the graph below, viscosity is measured at different temperatures for two formulated Mannich Base Curing Agents, MB400P/FF and MB401P/FF.

Hardness Evaluation

Hardness development at room temperature and at low temperature is a key factor to evaluate the
reactivity of a product like a Mannich Base, in this case for the two formulated Mannich Base Curing
Agents. In the following graphs the Shore D development with 3 different Epoxy Resins are reported at room temperature (20°C ± 1°C) and at low temperature (5°C ± 2°C).