Titanium dioxide | materials feature
The white stuff
There can be little doubt that current commercial upheavals among suppliers of titanium dioxide are having an effect on the state of development in the technology of this product, critical for the coloration of plastics and coatings. Suppliers have been suffering from falling demand
and prices as customers make use of their own stocks before buying again. When margins at producers are paper-thin, if not actually negative, restructuring is the order of the day.
Sachtleben TiO2
Huntsman has announced plans to buy Rockwood’s business – though the European
Commission has begun an investigation into this, saying that the move would remove competition between two major players. It will make a fi nal decision in July of this year. At the same time, DuPont has announced plans to spin off its Titanium Technologies division. In such circumstances, the inevitable fi nancial tidying-up is likely to hit spending that does not yield immediate results, and as is the way of things, R&D may well fall into that category. Developments are defi nitely going on in TiO2
for plastics compounds, but
the pace does appear to have slackened somewhat. At the recent K2013 exhibition in Germany, Hunts-
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le.com
Peter Mapleston looks at the latest developments in titanium dioxide
pigments for plastics, including new challengers to the established
suppliers and production technologies man was showcasing its Altiris TiO2 -based pigment that
preferentially refl ects infrared radiation from the sun. The company says that, when Altiris is mixed with coloured pigments, the result is higher solar refl ec- tance “in an unprecedented range of colourful polymers including dark and vibrant shades”. Altiris has the potential to produce Total Solar Refl ectance (TSR) in some colours – RAL 1016 Sulphur Yellow, for example – by over 70%. In RAL 2004 Pure Orange the fi gure is 65%, in RAL 6018 Yellow Green it is 40%, in RAL 5012 Light Blue it is 37%.
When launched in 2012, Altiris was initially aimed at building and construction applications such as siding
March/April 2014 | PIPE & PROFILE EXTRUSION 27
PHOTO: CRISTAL GLOBAL
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