Plastics News Europe - June 2019 - 24
elastomers
Broadly speaking, elastomers refer to any stretchy polymer that deforms under stress and
returns to its original shape when the stress is removed. Most are thermosets, but some are
thermoplastics. Germany-based Rucothel has found a way to combine the two. By Karen Laird
recycled tires provide
the solution
F
ounded in the 1990s by the Kölbl
family - father Herbert and his
sons, Andreas and Thomas
- whose entrepreneurial roots
lay in the gravel industry,
building and operating quarries and other large processing plants around the world,
Rucothel today has grown to
become the leading material
formulation and compounding
expert for the production of thermoplastic elastomers filled with cryomilled rubber flour from post-use
ground tires.
"The idea for these materials can
be directly traced to our family's heritage as owners and operators of gravel processing plants," explained
Thomas Kölbl, CEO of Rucothel. "In
that sector, abrasion for wear protection components from (virgin) rubber
was a permanent problem. Hence our
early focus on highly abrasion-resistant materials came naturally - from
real industry demands."
To solve the problem, the family
searched for a rugged material capable of enduring gruelling conditions
over longer periods. "We concluded
that the material from which truck
tires are made had the perfect properties when it came to long lifetime
under the harshest of conditions,"
said Kölbl.
At that same time, scrap tires were
starting to be seen as a serious environmental problem. "We recognised
that the quality characteristics of
scrap tires rubber were highly performant, particularly for wear protection. So we needed to find a technology to integrate these features into
another "category" of materials and
products," he added.
A learning process
While the idea was good, developing a process that could make it
work was truly a challenge. More
knowledge about the subject was
needed, which early on led to the
co-founding of a research community called the "Centre of Elastomeric
Powders" to explore the application
properties of milled tire rubber in a
more systematic way.
Rucothel compound
The main finding, said Thomas
Kölbl, was that rubber needs to be
integrated into the thermoplastic. "To
integrate rubber into plastics you
need to grind it in a very fine and
clean powder, which can be only
reached by cryogenic milling of the
tires, to reach a performant elastomeric alloy."
The idea of rucothel - rubber-compounded thermoplastic elastomers -
was born, but it took decades of additional research and application tests
to arrive at the performant materials
the company produces today.
"I believe that the key to our success
has been that we always considered
the entire value chain - from scrap
tire collection up to final products -
when developing materials and applications," said Kölbl.
That approach yielded a great deal
of experience with actual user requirements for high performance
products, as well as for the upstream
material requirements.
"We obtained patents for this
quite early, but I believe that our real
differentiator is the vast amount of
actual application and implementation experience," he noted. "We had
to overcome a great many hurdles,
not only technical and process matters, but also formalities, finding the
right partners to cooperate with -
companies, research institutes, patent lawyers etc. - and we conducted
24
a huge number of laboratory and
field tests. The funding came almost
completely from private sources, predominantly by the family shareholders. And it's been a lot! But I am
convinced that this has paid off."
Today, the company has established a strong patent position around
its material formulation technology,
compounding process and end products, on the basis of which it creates
application-optimised elastomeric alloys in collaboration with a wide range
of industry clients. "Each formulation
of rucothel incorporates decades of
research experience," said Kölbl.
Customised focus
Does this mean that there are no
standard products at all? Not completely. "Our focus is clearly on
high-performant customised compounds - that is the space where our
design know-how matches best with
individual customer demands regarding specific features. But we have developed a wide range of base compounds, which have been evaluated
by EMPA, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, and which form a kind of
"building block box" for many new
applications," Kölbl said.
These are produced according to a
process that evolved after many years
of trials and experiments.
"We learned that a continuous
june 2019
Plastics News Europe - June 2019
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