Emery Oleochemicals - Renewable Plastic Additives Since 1957

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To minimise the consumption of fossil resources and to reduce the carbon footprint, the demand for sustainable, renewable, bio-based or “green” products is constantly increasing. Emery Oleochemicals is a leading global producer of natural-based chemicals made predominantly from natural oils and fats that are readily available to meet this demand. Through its Green Polymer Additives (GPA) business unit, the company offers a comprehensive product portfolio of processing and performance additives for plastics, including lubricants, release agents, special plasticizers and surface modifiers.

Since 1957, Emery Oleochemicals has offered natural-based lubricants for plastics processing under the brand name LOXIOL®. The global volume of plastics products in the 1950’s was a mere fraction of today’s volumes. However, LOXIOL® additives have been a constant part of plastics processing since the beginning of the plastics age. Today, LOXIOL® products are still predominantly made from bio-based, renewable raw materials such as fatty acids, fatty alcohols or glycerol derivatives. The company also offers renewable plastic additives under its brand name EDENOL®, covering specialty plasticizers.

LOXIOL® and EDENOL® additives are designed to achieve specific performance benefits in plastics such as an improvement of the manufacturing process or of the finished plastics part itself. Lubricants and release agents enable or optimise the production, and special plasticizers improve the performance of the final plastics products while being stable against migration. Antistatic and antifogging agents improve the finished article by altering the plastics surface.

Committed to contribute to a more sustainable future, Emery Oleochemicals continues to manufacture its products mainly from bio-based feedstock.

However, not all LOXIOL® and EDENOL® products are 100% bio-based. Why is this? Not all building blocks of polymer additives are reliably available from bio-based sources. While bio-based feedstock is always the preferred option, the technical suitability, the targeted performance or the achievement of the desired effect takes priority. Currently, three out of four products in the Green Polymer Additives portfolio contain at least 50% bio-based feedstock. And, Emery’s GPA technical development experts are constantly working to replace fossil-based feedstock with sustainable alternatives.

The list of examples is extensive where bio-based additives are comparable to, or even outperform, fossil-based additives. One of these examples is the replacement of hydrocarbon waxes such as paraffin, Fischer-Tropsch and polyethylene waxes. This product group is often used as external lubricants since they are incompatible to many polymer substrates due to a difference in polarity; thus causing them to migrate to the surface. Bio-based external lubricants necessarily contain some polar moieties in their molecules such as ester bonds. Due to their molecular design, these moieties are cloaked and the bio-based molecule appears to have a non-polar shell. However, a bio-based additive is slightly more compatible to the polymer resulting in a better distribution over the surface. This, in turn, offers cost benefits since it is possible to utilise these additives in lower dosages.

Another example is the alternative to montanic wax and its derivatives. Montanic wax is extracted from brown coal through the use of hazardous chemicals in the refining and bleaching processes. A very limited number of sources for montanic waxes resulted in a severe shortage about one decade ago. Although the shortage has now been overcome, the number of sources is still small. However, multiple LOXIOL® products can successfully be used as alternatives. They are free of montanic compounds, but offer similar performance with natural-based benefits. And, through use of renewable sources, Emery Oleochemicals can offer security of supply of these products to the compounder, masterbatcher or polymer processor.

Renewable LOXIOL® and EDENOL® plastic additives are not just a passing trend. They are backed by over 60 years of technical expertise and plastics industry knowledge. The pioneers of this technology are also its ongoing innovators: Emery Oleochemicals.

Visit Emery Oleochemicals at this year’s Chinaplas, the 33rd international exhibition on plastics and rubber industries, being held in Guangzhou, China from May 21st to 24th. Emery’s Green Polymer Additives team looks forward to meeting you at Booth # A61 in Hall 10.2. We also invite you to attend our technical presentation about bio-based lubricants and discuss with our technical experts how our renewable plastic additives can meet your specific performance and sustainability requirements.

(PRA)

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