Coatings World - August 2011

Cabot and Dow Corning have worked closely together in Barry since 1991, when Cabot built its fumed silica facility adjacent to Dow Corning’s silicone monomer plant. As part of a highly interdependent and collaborative “fence-line” relationship, Dow Corning provides Cabot with silanes, which are converted to fumed silica for Dow Corning’s compounded silicones applications.

Cabot and Dow Corning have a similar “fence-line” relationship in Midland, Mich.

Fumed silica is an ultra-fine, high-purity particle used as a reinforcing, thickening, abrasive, thixotropic, suspending or anti-caking agent. The material is highly versatile and used in a wide-range of end-market applications for the automotive, construction, microelectronics and consumer products industries. Fumed silica helps improve the performance of adhesives, sealants, cosmetics, inks, toners, silicone rubber, coatings, polishing slurries and pharmaceuticals.

Cabot currently has six fumed silica manufacturing facilities globally, including two in the United States (Tuscola, Ill., and Midland, Mich.), two in Europe (Barry, Wales and Rheinfelden, Germany), and two in Asia (Jiangxi Province, China and Mettur, India).

Ashland to start construction
of Aquaflow NSAT plant
Ashland Aqualon Functional Ingredients,
a commercial unit of Ashland Inc., began
construction on a new nonionic synthetic
thickener manufacturing facility in Alizay,
France. The new manufacturing facility is
scheduled for completion and start-up in
late spring of 2012 and will increase
global capacity of Aquaflow non-
ionic synthetic associative thick-
eners (NSATs). Europe in
particular, has recently seen a
dramatic increase in demand for
Aquaflow NSATs, the company said. The
new facility will have capability to pro-
duce the full line of low-, mid- and high-
shear effective Aquaflow thickeners. CW

T
H
E Patented blending/dispersing blade design makes radical improvement over old saw tooth designs

Wacker starts operating production lines in Burghausen Wacker started operating several sili-cone-polymer production lines at its Burghausen, Germany site. The lines are for high-purity specialty silicones, encapsulation and coating compounds, as well as UV-activated silicones for the medical, LED and electronics industries. As these products must meet particularly high quality and purity requirements, a new clean room facility was added to the site. The new facility is operating according to selected Good Manufacturing Practice principles. The new clean-oper-ations facility produces Silpuran and Elastosil silicone elastomers for medical applications, as well as Lumisil, Semi-cosil and Silgel silicone products for encapsulating and coating electronic components. There is also a production line for UV silicones.

POLY STAINLESS

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