Petrochemical Products - Others

Oxidized polyethylene wax is frequently employed in plastics processing as an environmentally friendly plasticiser and internal/external lubricant, finding particularly extensive application in PVC products. It enhances processing efficiency by improving melt flow and reducing viscosity, while also enhancing the surface properties of the finished product. ‌Primary Functions and Effects‌: ‌Lubrication and Plasticisation: Provides balanced internal and external lubrication for PVC, reducing extrusion torque, promoting plasticisation, and improving melt flow to increase output. ‌Surface Performance Enhancement: Produces smooth, even plastic surfaces with increased gloss and transparency, while improving ageing resistance and scratch resistance. ‌‌Typical Application Areas‌: ‌PVC Product Processing: Extensively employed in manufacturing PVC films, profiles, pipes, injection-moulded parts, and foamed sheets. Can partially substitute other plasticisers to reduce costs. ‌Other Industries: Also utilised in hot-melt adhesives, coatings, and printing inks to provide anti-blocking, abrasion resistance, and gloss effects.

Microcrystalline wax plays a pivotal role in candle manufacturing due to its unique physical properties. It is typically blended with other waxes to enhance the overall performance of candles. Enhancing hardness and stability: Microcrystalline wax effectively increases the hardness of candles, preventing deformation or softening in high- temperature environments and thus maintaining shape stability. ‌Improved Burning Performance: Incorporating microcrystalline wax promotes a steadier flame during combustion, reduces soot and wax dripping, and extends burn duration. ‌Enhanced Gloss and Extensibility: Paraffin wax imparts superior sheen to candles. Its excellent extensibility and resilience prevent brittleness during production and transportation.

Oxidized polyethylene wax serves as a vital auxiliary agent in leather processing, primarily employed during the finishing stage to enhance the material's overall properties. Improved Hand Feel: OPE wax emulsion imparts a range of superior tactile qualities to leather, including silky smoothness, dry slipperiness, or oily smoothness, thereby elevating its sensory appeal. Enhanced Gloss and Hardness: Compared to traditional paraffin or microcrystalline waxes, the film formed by OPE wax exhibits superior gloss, greater density, and enhanced hardness, lending the leather surface a more premium appearance. ‌Providing Excellent Protective Properties:‌ OPE wax possesses water-repellent, oil-resistant, and anti-adhesive characteristics. It effectively shields leather from stains and moisture damage while improving its durability.

The core function of polyethylene wax in engineering plastics processing is lubrication, which operates on two levels: Internal lubrication: Polyethylene wax molecules disperse between resin molecular chains, weakening intermolecular forces and reducing melt viscosity. External lubrication: At processing temperatures, polyethylene wax migrates to the melt surface, forming a thin lubricating film between the plastic melt and the metal surfaces of processing equipment. Primary Functions and Benefits Improved Processability: Significantly reduces melt viscosity and enhances the melt flow index (MFI), facilitating processing of filled or reinforced systems. This is crucial for processing highly filled (e.g., mineral-filled, glass fibre-reinforced) or high-molecular-weight engineering plastics. Enhanced Production Efficiency: Reduces equipment adhesion, enables smoother material conveyance, shortens moulding cycles, and increases extrusion or injection moulding speeds.

Primary Functions and Mechanisms in Resin Processing Exceptional Lubricating Properties Internal Lubrication: OPE wax molecules permeate between resin macromolecular chains, weakening intermolecular forces and reducing melt viscosity. This facilitates easier plasticisation during processing, minimises friction- induced heat generation, enhances production efficiency, and lowers equipment energy consumption. External Lubrication: OPE wax migrates to the interface between the melt and processing equipment, forming a lubricating film that prevents melt adhesion. This is crucial for preventing material ‘screw clogging’, improving demoulding properties, and enhancing the surface finish of the final product. Superior dispersing action The polar nature of OPE wax enables it to better wet and encapsulate solid particles such as pigments and fillers. Acting as a dispersant, it effectively prevents agglomeration of these particles, ensuring uniform dispersion within the resin matrix. This not only enhances colour strength and opacity but also improves the mechanical properties and visual uniformity of the finished product.

Polyethylene wax serves as a commonly employed external lubricant in PVC product processing, primarily functioning to enhance processing fluidity, prevent melt adhesion to equipment, and improve the surface finish of the finished product. Lubrication: During PVC processing operations (such as extrusion, calendering, and injection moulding), polyethylene wax forms a lubricating film at the interface between the melt and metal equipment, reducing friction and preventing adhesion. Promoting plasticisation: Working in conjunction with internal lubricants, it regulates plasticisation rates to prevent over-plasticisation or insufficient plasticisation. Improving demoulding: Enhances the ease with which products release from moulds, reducing defects. Surface modification: Enhances product surface gloss while minimising surface imperfections such as fish eyes and flow marks. Synergistic stabilisation: Works in tandem with PVC thermal stabilisers to enhance thermal stability.

Microcrystalline wax is suitable for use as an insulating material, primarily due to the following characteristics: Superior electrical insulation: Possesses an extremely high resistivity, effectively preventing current flow, coupled with high dielectric strength. Outstanding moisture resistance and sealing properties: Features a dense structure and strong hydrophobicity, effectively isolating moisture and corrosive gases to prevent performance degradation caused by dampness. Good filling and encapsulation properties: exhibits high viscosity when molten with strong adhesion, enabling penetration and filling of minute voids between coils and components. Eliminates air bubbles to form a uniform, seamless insulating seal. Chemical stability and ageing resistance: possesses stable composition, withstanding oxidation and acid-alkali corrosion, ensuring extended service life.

Micronized wax serves as a crucial processing aid and performance modifier in PVC processing, primarily functioning as an external lubricant and surface modifier. Exceptional external lubrication properties: Reduces friction: Forms a lubricating film between the PVC melt and the metal surfaces of processing equipment, effectively lowering frictional resistance. Prevents adhesion: Inhibits melt adhesion to screws and moulds, ensuring continuous and stable production. Reduces energy consumption: Minimises mechanical shear and friction-induced heat generation, lowering main drive current and conserving energy. Enhanced surface properties of finished products: Improved surface finish: Produces smoother, glossier surfaces with superior tactile quality. Scratch resistance and anti-adhesion: Forms a wax film on product surfaces, enhancing scratch resistance and preventing adhesion during stacking or winding. Enhanced slip properties: Significantly reduces surface friction coefficients for soft products like films and sheets, improving slip characteristics.

During pigment processing, micro-wax effectively enhances pigment flowability and dispersion stability, preventing sedimentation, caking or agglomeration of pigment particles during storage or processing. This ensures uniform colour and stable performance in end products such as coatings, inks and plastics. Its specific functions are manifested in the following aspects: Enhancing dispersibility: Micronised wax's fine particles coat the pigment surface, reducing interparticle attraction and facilitating uniform dispersion within the matrix. ‌Improved processing performance: Acting as a lubricant, it reduces friction between pigments and processing equipment (such as extruders and mixers), lowering energy consumption and enhancing production efficiency.‌ ‌Enhanced end-product properties: In coatings and inks, micro-wax synergises with pigments to significantly improve coating abrasion resistance, scratch resistance, and surface gloss.‌

The mechanism and advantages of microcrystalline wax in metal lubrication lie in: Its fine crystalline structure enhances the gel strength, adhesion, and protective properties of grease, thereby forming a uniform, resilient oil film on metal surfaces that effectively isolates friction pairs and reduces direct contact; Simultaneously, its excellent adhesion and toughness maintain stability under dynamic loads, suppressing oil film rupture.‌ Compared to conventional paraffin wax, microcrystalline wax exhibits superior flex resistance and plasticity, enabling its lubricating film to better accommodate deformation in metal components. This makes it particularly suitable for applications demanding flexibility and impact resistance.‌

The application of microcrystalline wax in packaging paper manifests primarily in the following aspects: Firstly, it imparts gloss and water- repellent properties to the paper, enhancing both the product's visual appeal and protective capabilities. Secondly, as a coating, microcrystalline wax strengthens the packaging paper's resistance to moisture, grease, and adhesion, making it suitable for scenarios requiring isolation from dampness and oils. Additionally, microcrystalline wax improves paper flexibility and heat-sealing properties, making it more suitable for specialised packaging materials such as cardstock and corrugated board. This application not only enhances packaging functionality but also extends product shelf life.

The core advantages of micronized wax in polishing lie in: 1. Smoothness and gloss: Micron-sized particles effectively fill minute scratches and irregularities on paintwork or material surfaces. When the polisher evenly distributes and presses these particles into micro-pores, the surface becomes exceptionally flat. This concentrates light reflection, producing a deep, mirror-like lustre. 2. Superior protective properties: Wax inherently possesses hydrophobic qualities. Upon forming an ultra-thin protective film on the surface, it effectively shields the underlying material from erosion by contaminants such as water, acid rain, ultraviolet radiation, and dust. 3. Reduced Friction and Scratch Resistance: Particularly PTFE micronized waxes exhibit an exceptionally low coefficient of friction. Following polishing, this wax film renders surfaces smoother, less prone to dust adhesion, and provides moderate resistance against minor scratches. 4. User-Friendly Operation: Micronized waxes typically disperse more readily in solvent or emulsion formulations, yielding a uniformly textured final polish. During application, they generate minimal dust, exhibit excellent workability, and are relatively straightforward to wipe clean.

Oxidized polyethylene wax serves as a key multifunctional additive in PVC film processing, primarily employed to optimise processing performance and enhance product quality. Principal Functions and Effects Lubrication and Processing Performance Enhancement: OPE wax balances internal and external lubrication, reducing friction between PVC melt and equipment, minimising plasticisation delays, and increasing extrusion speed and production efficiency. Its polar groups also enhance compatibility with PVC molecular chains, preventing processing issues caused by excessive external lubrication. ‌Improved Dispersibility and Stability‌: In highly filled formulations, OPE wax adsorbs fillers and pigments, preventing agglomeration and enhancing dispersion efficiency to ensure uniform product performance.‌ Simultaneously, it synergises with thermal stabilisers by absorbing decomposed HCl, extending the processing window and reducing PVC thermal degradation.‌

Micronized wax primarily functions as a lubricant and processing aid in PVC extrusion, significantly enhancing processing performance and product quality. Mechanism and advantages of micronized wax in PVC extrusion: Micronized wax functions as both an external and internal lubricant during PVC extrusion, reducing intermolecular friction and enhancing melt flow. This increases extrusion rates while minimising equipment wear. Its spherical structure facilitates the formation of a uniform lubricating film, thereby reducing surface defects in the finished product and improving surface finish.