ANTIOXIDANTS | ADDITIVES


Pushing the limits in polymer stabilisation


Antioxidant producers are enhancing their products to meet new challenges, such as tougher recycling targets and aggressive agricultural techniques.Peter Mapleston reports on the latest developments


With the growing need to reduce, re-use and recycle plastics, especially polyolefins, the call for better ways to extend the lifetimes of products through multiple lives gets louder every day. Producers of stabilisers and antioxidant (AO) solutions are responding to that call with a whole range of new introductions based on both current and new chemistries. SI Group – which now includes what used to be Addivant – says it has developed an innovative antioxidant technology based on a proprietary patent-pending invention that enables “previously unmatched reduction of colour formation in polypropylene and polyethylene with existing antioxidant chemistries.” Named Ultranox LC, the new product is suitable for food-contact applica- tions and was discussed by Warren Ebenezer, SI Group’s Research Manager for Polymer Applica- tions, at the Performance Polypropylene 2019 conference organised by Compounding World


www.compoundingworld.com


publisher AMI in Cologne earlier this year. Ebenezer described Ultranox LC as a “fully


formulated solution in a non-dusting solid form that provides a best-in-class colour protection in polypropylene homo- and co-polymers with state-of-the-art consumer safety.” Antioxidants sacrificially protect polymer integrity, he said, and phenolics cause discolouration via the formation of highly unsaturated quinonoid chemical species. With Ultranox LC, colour change (as measured by Yellowness Index, YI) is 67% less than with an existing stearate-free AO after one pass and 47% less after five passes (Figure 1). Ultranox LC is intended to be exclusively included in additive blends or non-dusting blend solutions produced by SI Group, Ebenezer said. It will not to be marketed separately as a single component.


Ebenezer says the new LC technology is being investigated throughout the polymer arena and is


September 2019 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 83


Main image: Agriculture is one of many applications stretching the limits of current stabiliser technology, prompting SABO to commercialise its SABOSTAB UV 216 UV grade


PHOTO: SABO


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