First commercial Keltan ACE grade offers huge benefits

Geleen, Netherlands -- DSM Elastomers has launched its first commercial grade of EPDM ased on its new ACE technology. The company said the grade -- DE 8270C -- offers improvements in compression set, filler loading and volume of peroxide required. Formulations can significantly improve any one of theses parameters, without affecting the other two -- or gain lesser benefits in all three areas, if required.

The company launched the product yesterday at its R&D centre. Herman Dikland, business manager for the ACE project, said the material is also less scorchy, yet produces more cross-links for a given volume of peroxide. Furthermore, it offers improved self-adhesion in products such as two-layer hoses, where some products have historically failed along the interface.

Dikland said customer trials in the last few months have exceeded DSM's expectations for the technology, with customers reporting substantial benefits in processing and performance and especially cost over and above the technical benefits predicted by DSM.

Dikland said the ACE technology allows DSM to produce EPDM grades with up to three to five percent of VNB as the third monomer, while, keeping the gel content under control. This compares with under 1 percent in previous grades. The higher VNB content means the material responds more actively to the amount of peroxide present. Thus, the new grade can use less peroxide and coagent for a given cross-link density, with no penalty in other areas. He said some customers had made good compound using only one quarter the amount of peroxide used in their eexisting formulations.

A significant benefit of this reduction is that there are fewer peroxide decomposition products in the vulcanisate, but also less residual peroxide in the finished product. Historically, when a product has been run hot and in compression, someof the peroxide has caused extra cross-linking when the material is compressed, which has destroyed compressin set. The new grade offers substantion improvements in this area.

Dikland said DSM has produced one full scale commercial run of the product which was used mostly for customer trials at a limited number of development partners, but now has commercial quantities availble for sale to other customers. A second full commercial run will begin at the star of June.