Sustainable Plastic Lubricants
Sustainability is key when it comes to processing aids and lubricants for plastics compounds. These additives have always been used to facilitate compounding and final product processing, but now, the additives themselves are greening up too.
Sustainability is one of the main concerns for many of our customers. Clariant’s non-food-competing and sustainable products, such as Licocene Terra and Licocare RBW Vita, have been met with enthusiasm by these companies.
As Clariant we offer a wide range of additives based on mass balance certified ethylene and propylene from renewable hydrocarbons to our customers. According to latest studies, Clariant’s “Terra” additives are like-for-like drop-ins, so there is no need to retest, renew registrations or to modify production processes or equipment.
In addition to its Terra range, Clariant has also introduced the Vita range, nine rice bran wax-based solutions for formulators of high-performing engineering plastics, bioplastic compounds, masterbatches and coatings, based on non-food-competing feedstock.
With pigment and manufacturing costs continuing to climb, adoption of novel processing aids and lubricants which improve dispersion continues to grow. This situation results in reduced loadings of costly pigments and increased production rates.
Improving pigment dispersion is the first target of many customers. For example, they can improve an FPV (Filter Pressure Value) result of a difficult-to-disperse pigment from, say, 6 to 2 (bars pressure rise/ gram pigment), it opens the door to film and fibre applications, while also allowing a reduction in the dosage of a costly pigments needed to achieve the target colour and chroma.
An added benefit of the faster production is the reduced need to change extruder screens, while enjoying more consistent and reduced extruder pressure profiles. These two effects reduce the overall cost of materials and production, while delivering higher
quality products, which means better physical integrity of the finished articles.
These requirements are also needed to clients, when they use high temperatures and elevated barrel pressures to assure complete distribution of masterbatches into their polymers and the fastest production rate possible.
The Licocare RBW Vita range, a follow-up to the Licocare RBW range introduced two years ago is for engineering polymers.
Licocare® RBW additives function as highly effective lubricating and dispersing agents. These multi-purpose additives are based on crude rice bran wax. This is a non-food-competing by-product from the production of rice bran oil. Clariant chemically and physically upgrades this non-edible component of the oil and thus contributes to using the rice bran’s full value. The main target applications for Licocare® RBW are engineering thermoplastics such as polyamides, polyesters or TPU, biopolymers like PLA, and epoxy resins.
The major two grades for plastics applications, Licocare® RBW 300 TP and Licocare® RBW 102 TP, fulfil numerous highly demanding requirements set for example by the transportation and electrical and electronic industries. Licocare® RBW 300 TP is a highly thermostable, partially saponified wax, Licocare® RBW 102 TP is a medium-polarity wax type.
Clariant’s new solutions improve melt flow, lower the amount of force required to release parts from molds, ensure a more homogeneous distribution of pigments or fillers, and lead to less yellowing of final products. Furthermore, they offer outstanding processing stability, even at elevated temperatures, due to their superior thermal stability, very low volatility, and low metal content.
Licocare RBW Vita fully supports high-performance market requirement that go beyond current sustainability requirements.
Clariant has performed dozens of comparative tests such as melt flow, mould release, dispersion and colour development to support the positive properties and superior colour [less yellow] of products made with the new RBW’s in a variety of polymers, including polyamides, polyesters, PC/ABS, and PLA.
Licocare RBW Vita waxes were developed to match or improve the performance of Clariant’s existing montan ester waxes, which are derived from brown coal.
In this context, the bio-based raw materials are cleaner though, which means that analogous structures are brighter and perform equal to, or better than, the incumbent montan ester waxes.
Licocare 360 Vita TP even speeds up the cycle time when injection moulding polyamides, due to its nucleation effect on the PA. It causes the polymer to crystallize more rapidly, which reduces the cooling time of the injection moulding cycle, and also reduces shrinkage and warpage, problems often encountered when using troublesome pigments and long cooling times.
Göknur Çıtır
Middle East and Africa Region Sales Manager
Clariant
