MOSCOW (MRC) -- ARLANXEO, a leading global manufacturer of synthetic elastomers, has developed a rubber compound that can be used in the future to seal tires, as per the company's press release.
This solution for so-called self-sealing tires replaces the spare wheel and also presents an alternative to a repair kit or run-flat tire. An appropriate rubber compound from ARLANXEO, which is applied on the interior of the vehicle tire, enables holes occurring in the tire to be automatically sealed, so the driver can continue driving.
"With our development, we are giving an important impulse for the mobility of tomorrow," says Frank Luckgen, Global Marketing Director Tire in the Business Unit Tire & Specialty Rubbers (BU TSR) at ARLANXEO. "As a spare tire and the corresponding tools are no longer required, the weight of the vehicle and subsequently also its energy consumption are further reduced. In the case of electric vehicles, this can result in a longer range, for example," explains Luckgen.
The compound developed by ARLANXEO is applied on the interior of the tire. If, for example, a nail or other sharp object causes a hole in a tire, the rubber compound can seal the defect automatically. The tire is sealed immediately, regardless of the location and environment, while the car is moving.
"To ensure that our compound can guarantee optimal sealing in any climate zone regardless of the speed a vehicle is traveling, we are currently carrying out further tests under extreme conditions following successful laboratory tests," says Matthias Gotta, Head of Global Sales and Marketing in BU TSR. "Even in the case of strongly fluctuating external temperatures, the tires should be sealed in the same quality."
ARLANXEO conducts the corresponding tests with various partners under real-life conditions. Once the tests have been successfully completed, the compound will be launched on the market in the course of 2018.
As MRC wrote before, in January 2018, ARLANXEO announced that it is expanding its global chloroprene rubber (CR) production at the site in Dormagen, Germany. The production capacity there will be increased to as much as 70,000 tons per year overall that will be available to the market already during the first quarter of 2019. ARLANXEO is investing an upper single-digit million in the expansion project overall.
ARLANXEO was established in April 2016 as a joint venture of Lanxess - a world-leading specialty chemicals company based in Cologne, Germany - and Saudi Aramco - a major global energy and chemicals enterprise headquartered in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The two partners each hold a 50-percent interest in the joint venture. The business operations of ARLANXEO are assigned to the High Performance Elastomers and Tire & Specialty Rubbers business units.
MRC