“A low-volatiles content is the trend of the future”

Achieving our goal of enhancing the quality of both products and processes simultaneously was challenging. The low-volatiles platform development phase gave us a great deal of knowledge about LSR, especially in connection with process parameters and product properties. We also wanted to ensure our ability to manufacture the volumes required by the market. During the course of the project, we realized that our system and process can still be optimized further. I am confident that we have made good progress and commend all those involved for their tremendous achievement. But we will not rest on our laurels. Demands made on products and processing properties are continuously rising. LSR, the only liquid rubber that is easy to pump, has plenty of unexploited potential.

It’s important to us that our customers benefit from increased productivity. This applies not only to there being less of a need to handle molded parts, such as the mostly manual loading of postcuring ovens, but also to energy savings made by eliminating postcuring. Additionally, the time-consuming scrubbing of gases emitted during processing could be eliminated. Stringent specifications on the volatiles content, as in the Toyota standard I mentioned, can easily be met with our products. The important thing is to ensure that product and process quality is on no account compromised.

We strive to offer our customers the same level of product quality worldwide. However, this won’t be feasible overnight as the technology requires considerable investment.

The low-volatiles trend will affect our entire portfolio of silicone products. This trend has developed its own momentum as customers seek to increase productivity by eliminating process steps. At the same time, WACKER is committed to sustainability and would like to minimize the emission of volatiles into the environment during further processing of silicone products. The whole silicone industry has signed up for this approach, some aspects of which are required by the authorities. However, as I mentioned before, this will require extensive development and investment. We will also find out how much this effort is worth to our customers. Nevertheless, we will surely not stop with LSR. We are set to ramp up our development of low-volatiles solutions. And it’s no secret that stripping volatiles from high-viscosity products such as HTV rubber grades requires far more complex technology. But here too, we’re working on solutions.