Lanxess advances rubber curing option

ERJ staff report (PR)

Cologne, Germany – Lanxess has unveiled a new zeolite-based technology that can improve the speed and efficiency of resol curing processes for EPDM and other rubber materials.

Resol curing offers an alternative to established sulphur and peroxide crosslinking technologies for EPDM but is too slow for most manufacturing processes and suffers from marching cure.

At Expobor 2014 rubber fair – 23-25 April in São Paulo, Brazil – Lanxess presented a technology employing zeolite co-activator for resol curing. This, it said, speeds cure rates leading to reductions of up to 75 percent in scorch and vulcanisation times, and almost doubling the final degree of crosslinking.

The activation system is also applicable for resol curing of other types of rubber, including (X)IIR, CR, (H)NBR, BR, SBR and NR, noted Dr. Niels van der Aar, head of technical service & application development at Keltan Elastomers.

“Resol curing can now be considered as a realistic alternative to sulphur and peroxide curing systems making curing at lower temperatures possible and giving e.g. improved heat aging properties,” said van der Aar.

“Finally, it will also be shown that zeolite activation is effective not only for the thermoset vulcanisation of EPDM, but also for the dynamic vulcanisation of EPDM-based TPVs, enabling a reduction of the resol content and, thus, improving the TPV colour characteristics.”