Innovative Light Stabilizer Solutions Make Plastics Last Longer

In the recently concluded Chinaplas 2013 exhibition, Tiangang Auxiliary—a well-known enterprise in the plastic additives industry—launched several innovative light stabilizer products and solutions.

    I. High-performance, environmentally friendly light stabilizers Tiangang^® T-81 and T-70, suitable for weather-resistant modification of automotive polypropylene. Automotive OEMs impose strict requirements on polypropylene and other automotive modified materials. Tiangang's latest-generation light stabilizers Tiangang® T-81 and T-70 significantly improve the compatibility between stabilizer and resin, allowing the stabilizer to build a higher concentration on the light-exposed surface of the article without blooming. This markedly enhances stabilizer efficiency and reduces problems such as surface tackiness and excessive VOC caused by additive blooming, making them especially suitable as weather-resistant modifiers for automotive polypropylene materials.

The first phase of Tiangang's Asia-first 10,000-tonne light stabilizer production base in Gu'an County, Hebei Province, has been completed.

    II. For home appliances and other modified plastic applications, the weather-resistant modification of polypropylene is also a very important topic. How to achieve superior anti-aging performance with a lower addition level has always been a key R&D challenge. At this exhibition Tiangang also presented Tiangang^® HS-6608, a high-performance light stabilizer especially suitable for weather-resistant modification in the home-appliance industry. This stabilizer achieves excellent weather resistance improvement at a lower dosage, reducing customers' formulation cost while making higher-weather-resistance polypropylene applications possible.

    III. Applications such as fibers, films and artificial turf place higher demands on the light-stabilizing performance of high-molecular-weight hindered-amine light stabilizers, as well as on long-term thermal-oxidative aging resistance, water-stain improvement and reduced gas-fume discoloration. To meet this, Tiangang launched Tiangang^® HS-950 and Tiangang^® HS-625. These two high-molecular-weight hindered-amine light stabilizers not only surpass the widely recognized Tiangang^® HS-944 in light-stabilizing performance, but also improve auxiliary properties such as long-term thermal-oxidative aging resistance.

    IV. Because conventional hindered-amine light stabilizers are mostly alkaline, they lose activity when encountering acidic substances such as acid rain in the air or acidic pesticide residues in farmland, leading to premature aging and breakage of products such as agricultural greenhouse films. Tiangang's new-generation light stabilizers Tiangang^® T-68 and T-69 have undergone more than four years of field tunnel tests in the agricultural film industry—especially in pesticide-intensive areas such as Shanghai and Yunnan—with very good results.

    In addition, the first phase of Tiangang's Asia-first 10,000-tonne light stabilizer production base in Gu'an County, Hebei Province, was also completed at the end of 2012. Covering 100,000 square meters, the plant adopts full DCS automatic control with advanced process equipment and internationally advanced technology.