Rubber and Plastic News Digital Edition

Taniq: Fiber technology provides savings

By Brad Dawson

Rubber & Plastics News Staff

Taniq B.V., a Netherlands-based fiber reinforcement technology firm, is looking to make inroads in the U.S. and Europe to help rubber product manufacturers lower costs and make improvements in several areas.

The three-year-old firm doesn’t make fibers nor rubber products, but its forte is developing technology where fibers are used optimally and—in most cases— less material is necessary, said Taniq Managing Director Siebe Nooij.

“By testing the fiber structure, you can use materials more efficiently, use fewer fibers and less rubber and still have high-pressure capacity and more flexible products. We can help reduce costs, in some applications by as much

as 50 percent.”

Nooij talked about Taniq’s technology—called Corpo reinforcement—and the company’s plans for the future at the ACS Rubber Division Mini-Expo, held Oct. 14-16 in Louisville, Ky.

Taniq’s fiber reinforcement techniques can be used in a variety of rubber products, including flexible and bent hoses and expansion joints. Nooij said the principle behind the technology is that for optimal reinforcement of rubber products, the right shape of the part and the ideal path of the fibers have to be defined.

For straight hoses, for example, the “magic angle”—where the hose won’t elongate or expand under internal pressure—is fixed. But for complex rubber products, that angle is variable, and

Elastomer coagent, TPU

added to Sartomer offerings

By Brad Dawson

Rubber & Plastics News Staff

Specialty chemicals supplier Sartomer Co. Inc. has added a thermoplastics urethane and a scorch-retarding elastomer coagent to its product offerings.

The 7840 TPU is diene-based and designed for the rubber and plastic markets,

Exton, Pa.-based Sartomer said, and enables formulators to apply urethane properties to standard rubber formulations.

TPUs based on diene prepolymers present a new material form with both rubber-like soft segment and hard urethane linkages.

“The unique thing about this particular TPU is that the soft segments are ^Mateerpolybutadiene, so it will act like a TPU but it will cure like an elastomer,” said Chuck Mateer, marketing manager, Ri-con & SMA Resins for Sartomer, at the mini-expo.

“So where TPUs are really good for adhesion and tie-layers, now you can get the adhesion to an elastomer where it will actually use the cure system from the underlying elastomer and give you the chemical bond, not just the physical bond.”

The 7840 TPU can be processed using both standard rubber and thermoplastic equipment. Sartomer views the material as being ideal for tie-layers and has had requests to have it extruded into film, but it has many potential applications, Mateer said. These include polymer/rub-ber modification, barrier layers, adhesives and sealants, hoses and tubing, wire and cable, footwear and coatings.

Sartomer’s other new product, SR533R, is a scorch-retarding version of triallyl isocyanurate. The coagent allows formulators to mitigate the rapid onset of scorch and increases in-process and cure scorch safety while maintaining cured physical properties, the company said.

Coagents for elastomers primarily are divided into Type 1 and Type 2, Mateer said, where Type 1s affect the state and rate of cure and Type 2s affect only the state, not the rate. TAIC historically is Type 2, yet Sartomer talked with customers and found that when used with

FKM, it acts like a Type 1 coagent.

As a result, the company targeted flu-oroelastomers as the niche for a scorch-retarding TAIC.

“It’s not something we would have historically considered,” Mateer said. “But we think it provides just enough to get you through an injection molding cycle, where you need just a little bit of delay as you go through the process and get through your cycle before it cures.”

SR533R is especially effective in the peroxide cure of elastomers for demanding applications like oil and gas exploration, aerospace seals, and automotive and off-road gaskets encountering high temperatures and pressures.

Both products are made in the U.S. by Sartomer primarily for the U.S. market, Mateer said.

Taniq has developed its technology to optimize the reinforcement to fit the angle, allowing the product to handle higher pressures, gain more flexibility and control the geometry under pressure, and reduce material costs, the company said.

Fewer materials also mean less weight, a key factor in many industries but especially automotive, Nooij said. The firm has worked with manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. in that market as well as the rescue _RPN _photos _by _Brad _Dawsonsegment and some other in- Taniq B.V.’s Siebe Nooij said his company is looking dustries. For now Taniq to build its fiber reinforcement technology business in prefers to help those compa- the U.S. and Europe. nies rather than make products itself, he said.

Typically, Taniq finds out a potential customer’s needs and sets up a customized project. When the project reaches the “success” stage, Taniq will issue a license for the company to use its technology in its processes, Nooij said.

“We’re going into the customer’s plant and helping them solve a problem,” he said. “We like to think of ourselves as outsourced R&D for those companies. Where everyone is trying to invent their own wheel, we think we have a good solution for them.”

The biggest challenge Taniq faces when it takes on a project is integrating its technology within the manufacturing process of the customer. “The people we work with are open-minded in finding the best solution to their problems, but it isn’t an ‘add-in’ solution. It has to be customized for their parts and processes.”

Taniq wants to grow in Europe and the U.S., where manufacturing and material costs generally are higher and

there’s more incentive to keep providing better technology that helps customers save money and improve efficiency, Nooij said.

“If you don’t make innovations now, what they make will be made in China for less, and then you’re losing,” he said. “If we keep developing in the U.S. and in Europe, others might copy what we do, but they’ll be behind.”

Nooij said there’s a good chance that Taniq will open a location somewhere in the U.S. within the next couple of years, but for now the firm can serve its customers globally from Europe. “We can stay up a little later at night and make our calls to the States,” he joked.

Taniq employs eight and is based in Delft, Netherlands. Nooij and most of his colleagues are former engineering and science students at Delft University of Technology, where the fiber reinforcement technology and the idea for Taniq were born.