Soft Black Breakthrough: Ultra High-Structure Achieves Excellent Rubber Reinforcement and Dynamic Stiffness At Low Filler Level

There is a range of soft blacks used in the rubber industry for different applications, from tires to mechanical goods. With standard soft blacks, high filler loading is necessary to achieve sufficient dynamic and static stiffness of compounds. However, in comparison to hard blacks, soft blacks have not achieved a high level of aggregation expressed as COAN -- until recently. Orion Engineered Carbons developed a new soft black that offers a specific surface area of 40 m²/g and is characterized by an ultra-high OAN as well as an ultra-high COAN.  

With this new soft black, the fill factor of rubber compounds can be significantly reduced without sacrificing hardness or stiffness. The unique performance of an ultra high-structure soft black is of special interest to tire makers in meeting new rolling resistance requirements, and it opens the door to a variety of possible applications: Reduced fill factors will lead to decreasing hysteresis losses. This can be applied both in tires (tire casing compounds) and MRG (reduced heat build up under dynamic load). Furthermore, lower fill factors lead to lower compound density and thus lighter rubber articles. In addition, excellent reinforcement properties can help increase oil content in rubber compounds without deteriorating mechanical properties. Using more oil can also help to reduce compounding costs.