Conference covers high performance fillers

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Oct 10, 2005

The second two-day International Conference on High Performance Fillers will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Cologne City Centre, Germany on 21st and 22nd March 2006.

The second two-day International Conference on High Performance Fillers will take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Cologne City Centre, Germany on 21st and 22nd March 2006.

Rapra has been working with polymers for over 85 years.

Current projects include: Surefire on polyester/nanoclay compounds; Polycond looking at surface modification of carbon nanotubes and polyaniline fillers; Flaretpol on magnesium hydroxide and nanoclays as flame retardants in polypropylene; Nanorub on nanoclays in rubbers; and Biocomp on fillers and polymers/resins derived from natural materials.

This conference focuses on developments in high performance fillers from established materials to the latest innovations.

There are presentations on many different types of fillers from flash calcined clays (Imerys), diatomaceous earths and perlites (World Minerals), aluminas (Sasol), natural fibres (Queens's University Belfast), titanium oxides (Oxonica), mica (Quartzwerke), wollastonite (RT Vanderbilt), pigments (Eckart) and glass foam (Trovotech) to nanographite (State University of Michigan), POSS (Hybrid Plastics and Prof Camino) and other nanocomposites (Prof Kenig, S Dunger).

BASF and Electrolux will discuss filler interactions with other compounding ingredients, and surface modification with silanes will be presented by Dow Corning.

The filler market in Europe and NAFTA is estimated at about 7.5 million tonnes, with a value of about Eur 3 to 4 billion.

The size of the high-performance filler market is estimated at between 0.5 and 1 million tonnes with a value between Eur 400 and 600 million.

Filler surface modifiers are important in many applications and are dominated by fatty acids and organosilanes.

Significant market growth is taking place in several areas, particularly in composites using nanofillers, natural fibres or fire-retardant fillers.

High Performance Fillers 2006 will appeal to compounders, moulders, processors, materials specialists, polymer engineers and researchers in polymer science, together with end users of polymer materials.