A New Series of HNBR Grades Offer More Flexibility in Compound Design

HNBR elastomers were first commercialized by Nippon Zeon in 1984. Another big player (Lanxess, formerly Bayer) joined the ranks shortly after. Since that time this class of elastomer has gained significant market acceptance in a wide number of important applications, including timing belts, oil industry parts, and many different seals.

Considerable effort has been directed to improving the processing of these elastomers. As a result “easy processing” grades (EP or AT for example) were introduced.

Recently, Zannan SciTech has developed a series of HNBR elastomers based on a unique catalyst system that allows the production of HNBR elastomers with a wide range of Mooney viscosities, ACN content, and level of saturation. In addition, the catalyst system has the ability to break the NBR polymer chain into lower molecular weight segments and thus reduce the viscosity of end product even more. Finally, the new catalyst systems also allow the use of standard nitrile rubber grades rather than requiring ultra-pure NBR polymers.  The fact that many more grades can be offered allows the technical compounder the ability to formulate the products to more exacting requirements.