Evonik's WPC evolution focuses on acrylic

(europeanplasticsnews) -- The polymer used in wood plastics composites (WPC) is usually PP or PVC. But Evonik Industries has worked with Reifenhauser to develop a PMMA-based Plexiglas Wood brand.

The new material is compounded and extruded into 50-75% reinforced WPC profiles on a Reifenhauser direct extrusion line.

Carlo Schutz, manager innovative projects at Evonik, says the idea of PMMA-based WPC arose from using acrylic products as protective coatings on conventional wood product surfaces.
Evonik went on to develop colourless and coloured modified PMMA containing binder and adhesion additives. These ensure optimal coupling between the PMMA and cellulose components of the reinforcing wood fibres.

Additional expensive stabilisers are not required, as shown in 10,000 hours of artificial weathering on PPMA- and PP-based WPC profiles, says the company.

Schutz has presented a table showing that natural and coloured Plexiglas Wood has a flexural modulus of 8,800MPa and 10,000MPa. Although below some tropical woods, these values are close to or slightly higher than beech, spruce and red cedar.
Flexural modulus was found to be much higher than for PVC-WPC (6,500MPa) and two different PP-WPC formulations (3,200 and 4,500MPa).

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(basf.com) -- BASF is increasing its presence in the growing African markets. Today, December 7, 2011, the company will open a new office in Nairobi, Kenya, to serve customers in East Africa and Sub-Sahara.

⌠Africa is a huge continent with a wealth of raw materials and a growing population. At the same time, the dynamically growing economy has enormous potential for BASF. Through establishing a stronger local presence we will be able to even further support our customers and to enhance BASF's market position, said Jacques Delmoitiez, President, responsible for BASF's business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The company's target is to more than double sales in Africa by 2020. Its sales, excluding oil and gas, were around EUR1 billion in 2010.

The sale of innovative construction chemicals for the booming construction industry in the urban areas of East Africa is one of the main focuses of activity, as is the distribution of crop protection products that increase crop yields. At the same time, BASF is expanding its business in the consumer sector with products such as ingredients for personal care products and laundry detergents as well as pharmaceutical ingredients.

BASF is also developing solutions to the pressing challenges that affect large parts of Africa. For the private housing sector, BASF supplies insulating materials such as Neopor╝. Another key project is the fight against vitamin A deficiency. Too little vitamin A can cause blindness and makes people more prone to infections. Staple foods, such as cooking oil and flour, are therefore fortified with vitamin A with the help of BASF.

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(Clariant) -- Clariant announces the next stage in its on-going capacity expansion program for Exoli OP non-halogenated flame retardants, with the addition of a third production unit at its site in Hurth-Knapsack, near Cologne, Germany. Integration of a third production facility, which is set to come on-stream in 2013, will result in an overall tripling of capacity since growth plans were first communicated during K 2010.

Clariant created extra capacity in mid-2011 through a Phase One debottlenecking at its existing full-scale commercial plant at Hurth-Knapsack. The plant has been producing Exolit OP since 2004. The on-target completion of a second industrial-scale unit at the site (Phase Two) by mid-2012 will double effective capacity. The start of the new third production facility in 2013 will then triple the baseline capacity of the original plant.

The capacity expansion program reflects the steadily growing demand of the electrical and electronics (E&E) industry for safer and more environmentally-compatible flame retardants. The Exolit OP phosphinate-based flame retardant product line has become a well-established halogen-free alternative to brominated flame retardants for engineering thermoplastics and other polymers in electric and electronic equipment.

Clariant is currently evaluating options in Asia to further increase the capacities of Exolit OP, with the target to be on-stream during 2014/2015.

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(Trend) -- BP, the operator developing the block of offshore fields Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli in Azerbaijan, has recently stopped work on the Central Azeri platform, which is part of the technical maintenance programme of three extractive platforms in the Caspian Sea, the company told Trend on Monday. The platform will be commissioned in mid-December. Prior to this the company had held tests and commissioned the Eastern Azeri and Western Azeri platforms.

According to the plan, the production on the three platforms, Eastern Azeri, Western Azeri and Central Azeri will be suspended in a planned sequence to ensure efficient technical maintenance. The company stressed that the work is not going to be stopped on all three platforms simultaneously. When working on one, the other two platforms located on the Azeri field will continue working. This is part of a daily technical maintenance programme which is on-going.

The planning in connection with this and other maintenance work carried out earlier this year began a year ago and included in the annual programme of operations and budget.

The Azeri technical maintenance programme includes general, mechanical, instrumentation and other work.

The production from other platforms, under the BP management - Chirag, Deep-Guneshli (both - parts of the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli) and Shah Deniz, as well as export transactions through the South Caucasus Gas Pipeline (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum) and the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline will continue as usual.

The BTC pipeline and Sangachal terminal will continue working as normal by coordinating the on-going production process at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli and Shah Deniz fields. The shipment in Ceyhan will continue as scheduled. It reflects the reduction of the volume resulting from planned technical maintenance and cessation of work of the platforms in the Azeri field.

ACG participating interests are: BP (operator - 37. 4 %), Chevron (11.3 %), SOCAR (10 %), INPEX (11 %), Statoil (8.6 %), ExxonMobil (8 %), TPAO (6.7 %), ITOCHU (4.3 %), Hess (2.7%).

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(BASF) -- BASF and three top European universities team up on functional materials research. BASF SE has set up a research initiative called Joint Research Network on Advanced Materials and Systems (JONAS) in collaboration with the universities of Strasbourg, France; Freiburg, Germany, and ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

The aim is to work jointly to strengthen the scientific base and understanding of modern materials and systems and expand the international research network. ⌠Functional materials with new combinations of properties offer vast innovative potential. To realize that potential, we need both wide-ranging expertise and a creative interdisciplinary network in order to develop new impulses and ideas and joint exploration of new themes. That is precisely what we hope to achieve through close cooperation with these top universities, said Dr. Christian Fischer, head of Polymer Research at BASF.

The cooperation will create approximately 20 new post-doc positions at the three universities. The spectrum of future research themes is broad. One area is multi-materials, which are made up of a variety of components and in that way present new and improved performance profiles. Other examples of future research topics are biobased and biodegradable polymers.

⌠The diversity of the potential material innovations from this cooperation is immense, and the potential applications are equally wide-ranging, commented Dr. Bernd Bruchmann, BASF Vice President in Polymer Research and head of JONAS, adding that system solutions in heat management, lightweight construction and sustainable packaging were areas of interest.

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