One-component epoxy resins offer stable quality and ease of handling, but efficient, green latent accelerators are still in demand. A Chinese team has developed a bio-derived accelerator synthesised via Michael addition of itaconic acid and imidazole. The chemical structures were characterised by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR and TOF-MS.Reading tip: Epoxy coatingsUncover cutting-edge developments in water-borne epoxy resin technology and their use in various coatings application fields with the new EC Tech Report Water-borne Epoxy Coatings. Long-term storage and fast activationFormulations with bisphenol A epoxy, dicyandiamide and the new accelerator showed over 210 days of shelf life at room temperature, compared to less than eight days for alternatives. The excellent latent performance stems from steric hindrance and salt formation effects, suppressing reactivity during storage but enabling rapid curing when needed.