With the rapid development of the plastics industry, the masterbatch industry, i.e. the plastic coloring industry, has become an indispensable industry in the plastics industry, especially with the rapid development of the automobile manufacturing, consumer goods, and daily household appliances industries in recent years, people gradually put forward higher and higher requirements on the appearance of the products and asked for a brilliant and colorful color, which makes masterbatch coloring of the plastics products become a major coloring method.
Masterbatch, i.e. pigment concentrate, refers to the particle aggregates prepared by uniformly dispersing the pigments in carrier resin in an amount higher than the number of ordinary dyeing pigments and is specially used for coloring new organic polymer products.
Masterbatch is usually a plastic colorant prepared by uniform dispersion of pigment and thermoplastic resin more than the usual proportion, and the carrier resin it adopts has excellent wettability to the pigment, as well as excellent dispersion to the pigment and good compatibility with the resin to be colored.
The main components of masterbatches generally include carrier resin (e.g. polyolefin), pigment (various organic and inorganic pigments), and dispersant (e.g. polyethylene wax, EVA wax), and a small number of masterbatches will add a certain amount of surfactant or coupling agent (e.g. silane coupling agent, which is the most common one) in the preparation.
Many industrial plastic products require high mechanical strength, and sometimes also require high temperature with good durability, these need to add fillers to achieve. The so-called filler that is in the plastics processing industry, the content is relatively higher than the dispersant, additives, and other additives, filling in the plastics processing or coloring process in the auxiliary components.
Fillers from a wide range of inorganic mineral materials, the presence of which can increase the relative yield of plastics, increase the strength of plastics, heat resistance, and significantly reduce the cost of plastic products so that the plastic ingredients have better processing performance, better physical properties and rich mechanical properties and other properties. Comprehensive filler requirements, barium sulfate, wollastonite, kaolin, talc calcium carbonate, and other inorganic minerals and synthetic fillers are more commonly used.
Calcium carbonate
Calcium carbonate is a widely used inorganic filler due to its rich properties, low price, and wide source. Calcium carbonate filler for products can improve product processing and application performance while reducing the cost of products. Compared with other fillers, calcium carbonate filler has the characteristic of low hardness, which has very little influence on processing equipment; at the same time, calcium carbonate has very little influence on the coloring performance of pigments or other coloring agents, which is beneficial to the stability of product color.
In addition, calcium carbonate is also commonly used as a filler for most rubber and plastic processing products. Due to a series of advantages of calcium carbonate, its application in the plastics industry is extensive, compared with other inorganic mineral fillers, and has a higher use value.
Bentonite Clay
Because of its excellent physicochemical and technological properties, bumpy bar clay has always been known as the king of thousands of clays. These excellent properties have made it widely used in the construction industry, light industry, agriculture, animal husbandry, textile, geological exploration, ocean drilling, decoloring and water treatment, detergent auxiliaries, cosmetic raw materials, fillers for plastics and rubber, molecular sieve raw materials, desiccant, and so on.
After purification and finishing, the bumpy bar clay is widely used as the filler of plastic and rubber, widely used in woven bags, flooring, plastic film, packing tape, and so on.
Wollastonite
Wollastonite has been exploited since the 1960s, with proven reserves of nearly 200 million tonnes and prospective reserves of about 400 million tonnes worldwide, with major producers in the UK, India, Finland, and China. Wollastonite is more effective in filling and reinforcing plastics and rubber products than kaolin and calcium carbonate.
Wollastonite is increasingly widely used in plastics and rubber because of its superiority in filling and reinforcing plastics and rubber products.
Kaolin
Because of its excellent properties, kaolin is widely used as a filler modifier for thermoplastic and thermosetting plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), polyester, nylon (PA), and phenolic resins. However, because kaolin is acidic, it may cause harmful chemical reactions with other components of the filling system during the filling modification of plastics, so care should be taken when using kaolin as a filler modifier.
In general, to eliminate the acidic hazards of kaolin, a coupling agent surface modification method is used to carry out. After surface modification of kaolin and plastic with better adhesion, it can effectively improve the dispersion of the whole system and the fluidity.
Talcum Powder
At present, production of talcum powder is mainly used as raw material for natural talc ore; first of all, the natural talc ore is crushed, and the crushed ore can be prepared into talcum powder after selecting or calcining; this type of talcum powder has a relatively low content of calcium and other impurities, talcum powder with these characteristics of the filler and modification of plastics has been widely used as a filler in plastic filling modification, not only can fill the plastic, reduce its cost, but also as a modifier to improve the mechanical properties of plastics effectively, improve the dimensional stability of plastics and high-temperature creep resistance, so at present, the talc powder in the automobile, aviation, instrumentation and other industries. As a filler used in the plastic filling modification, it not only fills the plastic to reduce its cost but also as a modifier to effectively improve the mechanical properties of plastics, improve the dimensional stability of plastics, as well as high-temperature creep resistance, so at present the talcum powder in the automotive, aerospace, instrumentation, and other industries have been widely used.
Barium Sulfate
Barium sulfate can be divided into natural barium sulfate and white or grey barite powder, and its particle size is generally 3±1μm relatively brittle. With a melting point of 1580 ℃, pH value of 4.5 or so, and Mohs hardness of 3.5 or so, the particles are coarser, and impurities are also more for the general neutral body filler.
The other one is barium sulfate prepared by the synthetic method, commonly known as synthetic barium sulfate (precipitated barium sulfate). The whiteness of this kind of product is large, the particle size is small, and it is almost insoluble in water, ethanol, and acid. Still, it can be dissolved in hot, concentrated sulphuric acid, suitable as a plastic filler modifier. Moreover, since barium sulfate is heat-resistant, chemically resistant, and chemically stable, its use as a plastic filler can effectively improve product chemical and heat resistance.