New regulations, especially in Europe, push brand owners and their compounders to integrate recycled plastics in their products. This creates a need to use more and more additives to compensate for the weaker properties of recycled plastic feedstocks. Indeed virgin resins can be produced with an extreme precision to have the right performance. They require limited number of additives to improve their properties such as impact resistance. It is much more complex to ensure that recycled feedstocks have consistently good properties. In many situations, compounders need to improve several properties at the same time. SKFP has designed new additives, such as LOTADER® AX8900T, which is our new impact modifier with a high content of epoxide groups (8% of glycidyl methacrylate). This additive is multipurpose since it can be used for impact modification, rheology control, and matting agent.
The new LOTADER® AX8900T resin is as an efficient impact modifier used alone. It has also good impact performance also when it is combined with a non-reactive LOTRYL® EMA/EBA copolymer. It also has the ability to increase significantly the viscosity of the final compounds, such as PBT, PET or ABS.
In PBT compounds, LOTADER® AX8900T is extremely efficient at increasing the melt strength of PBT. Its combination with Lotryl 35BA40T can be used to improve the impact resistance of PBT with limited increase of the viscosity.
In many cases, the combination of multiple additives is necessary to find the right balance of the final compounds properties. LOTADER® AX8900T and LOTRYL® 40MA05T gave outstanding impact resistance in recycled HIPS.
We also recommend LOTRYL® 28BA700T to drastically increase the fluidity of engineering plastics, such as PC/ABS, and at the same time reaching high impact resistance. These solutions are used in compounds processed into molding part through injection molding.
Last but not the least, there is an increasing need for hydrolysis protection of polyamides and polyester compounds. Our reactive LOTADER® terpolymers, with epoxide or maleic anhydride functions, are very efficient in preventing the degradation of these resins in presence of moisture. The graph below displays the melt index variation in presence of water at 80°C temperature and clearly shows the efficiency of LOTADER in hydrolysis prevention. When using 15% of LOTADER® AX8900T, the PBT compound melt index is stable showing a good hydrolysis protection.