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Our high-performance thermoplastics additives and solutions
Thanks to their versatility, thermoplastic materials are in high demand worldwide and constitute a booming market. Applications range from products for the automotive industry to electrical and electronic products, from film and packaging to products for the construction industry and white goods.
For all these applications, our diverse portfolio supports different stages of the value chain, improving material properties plus product quality and optimizing efficiency during production. Our portfolio consists of single- and multi-component, ”one pack” additive blends. The latter are based on our innovative skin-core extrusion and compacting technologies, which make them particularly easy to handle and often help increase additive concentration.
Our products are suited for a wide range of plastic materials, including polyolefins and engineering plastics. Besides processing aids, novel coupling agents, and modifiers from our BYK and SCONA brands, the BYK-MAX and RECYCLOBYK products play a major role in thermoplastics applications. Most of them are designed precisely for that purpose.
The functional additives are used to achieve a multitude of properties, which are crucial for today’s state-of-the-art thermoplastic applications in the automobile industries as well as the electric and electronics sectors. Properties include UV and heat stability, flame retardancy, nucleation, and desiccation. Additionally, there is a range of additives providing anti-fog, anti-scratch, and anti-static effects.
To best support our customers, our organization differentiates between industrial applications and transportation applications. This allows our end use specialist teams to focus their know-how and expertise in one area of application and collaborate on projects with direct and indirect customers. Our laboratories contribute to this collaboration, running application tests of our additives that replicate our customers’ production conditions. We have a number of laboratory machines at our disposal, including tape casting, injection molding, and single- and twin-extrusion machines.
Our processing aids improve throughput and process efficiency. This concerns the dispersion of pigments and fillers, but also reduction of viscosity, odors, or VOC. Often, these additives also enhance the mechanical properties of the finished parts without affecting their appearance.
As our latest innovations show, this organization helps us to support our customers with innovative solutions, and to capture new market trends early and efficiently.
Our global end use team thermoplastics industrial serves a broad range of industries and provides manifold performance solutions. Applications include cables, film, food packaging, white goods, structural components, and many more. Despite that diversity, our additives share some common characteristics: they are safe to handle, dust-free, easy to dispense, and display consistently high quality.
Flame retardancy is a significant field of application for our performance additives. Our BYK-MAX FR products offer a wide range of flame retardants while some of our BYK-MAX CT additives provide flame retardant synergists for different polymer applications. Also included are highly efficient halogen-free additives to reach V0 levels in polyolefin products and UL standards 94 V0 in polyamides.
For PE products used in film and fiber, our BYK-MAX FR 4144 additive combines flame retardancy with other properties, such as UV stability, resulting in a longer service life of the final product.
To help our customers comply with the most stringent fire standards for cable formulations, we provide easy-to-disperse flame retardant synergists, which add a further benefit to the compounds. The clay-based fillers boost the mechanical properties of the materials, especially tensile strength and elongation at break.
To prevent plastic film based on PE turning brittle quickly, film producers employ UV stabilizers. However, their handling is complicated, due to the dusty or sticky nature of these substances. Our BYK-MAX LS concentrates provide a highly effective alternative to improve the life cycle of plastic film, fibers, and other extruded items. Thanks to their excellent feeding characteristics, the dust-free granules or pellets can be dosed accurately and reliably. More importantly, they support a uniform and reproducible manufacturing process. We also offer grades, such as the BYK-MAX LS 4122, that are suited for food applications.
To produce transparent materials, our BYK-MAX NU products provide perfect nucleating and clarifying properties for PE and PP. Some additives, such as BYK-MAX NU 4230, comply with EU, U.S., and Japanese food regulations and are therefore suited for food contact applications. The pellets can be applied in film extrusion, thermoforming, and injection and blow molding processes. They increase both the crystallization rate and the number of spherulites. As a result, they step up molding and extrusion productivity and improve both stiffness and heat deflection temperature. With more controlled shrinkage and less warpage, the overall product quality benefits.
Almost every car brand worldwide relies on our thermal stabilizers. Since our additives help to minimize oxidation processes, they also help to meet the industry’s strict requirements regarding thermal aging. Using our products, PA6 remains stable for up to 2,000 hours at 150 °C and GF-PPA compounds remain stable up to 5,000 hours at 180 °C.
Our broad range of processing additives improves processes and products alike. Products in the BYK-MAX portfolio help reduce friction between the polymer melt and the internal metal surfaces of processing equipment without impacting the mechanical properties of the final product.
In extrusion processes and in solid masterbatches, the BYK-P and BYK-MAX P additives provide excellent wetting of pigments and fillers, and less compacting plus low melt viscosity. This leads to improved particle dispersion and lower filter pressure value (FPV). As a result, the throughput increases. Contrary to expectations, the finished part’s mechanical qualities benefit, too.
Our global end use team thermoplastics transportation is a reliable partner for automotive applications. Our additives are employed in thermoformed and molded exterior parts, interior parts, under-the-hood applications (PA6, PA6.6), in insulations for electrical parts, as well as for underbody and sound control panels. The broad and multifarious range of solutions includes coupling agents, processing aids, thermal and UV stabilizers, plus high performance mineral fillers and emulsions for fiber sizing.
Fiber-reinforced thermoplastic compounds are in increasingly high demand as lightweight materials. They are used for structural and interior parts in the automotive industry. Our innovative high-performance SCONA coupling agents enhance mechanical properties of PP compounds reinforced with carbon, glass, or natural fibers. In particular, they improve elastic modulus, tensile strength, and heat deflection. With their high proportion of bound maleic anhydrides, our SCONA products achieve efficient bonding of fibers and permit low additive dosages. Ultimately, this leads to extremely economic formulations.
Fillers are needed to improve the stiffness of low density PP-compounds. Based on our innovative clay-based technology, our unique functional filler provides a premium alternative to standard talc products. Its lower dosing level reduces the weight, and the mixed mineral improves the material’s surface properties. As a result, scratches are less visible and not as deep.
Almost every car brand worldwide relies on our thermal stabilizers. Since our additives help to minimize oxidation processes, they also help to meet the industry’s strict requirements regarding thermal aging. Using our products, PA6 remains stable for up to 2,000 hours at 150 °C and GF-PPA compounds remain stable up to 5,000 hours at 180 °C.
In combination with our thermal stabilizers, our coupling agents also improve mechanical properties of thermoplastic components. To comply with the extremely strict regulations for the automotive industry worldwide, we recommend our BYK-MAX HS one-pack custom concentrates. They slow thermal aging while increasing impact strength as well as thermal and UV stability.
