The Impact of Carbon Black Morphology and Dispersion on the Weatherability of Polyethylene

Carbon black Ultraviolet (UV) light sta-

bilizer Morphology Weatherability

Carbon black is one of the most widely used and most effective ultraviolet (UlV) light stabilizers for plastics applications. Several important segments of the plas-tics industry rely on carbon black for UV stabilization of weather-resistant pro-ducts, including telecommunications and power cable jacketing, plastic pipes, geosynthetic membranes and agricultur-al films. Recent research at Cabot Cor-poration confirms that the quality of the dispersion of the carbon black in a plas-tic medium (i.e. polyethylene) is an im-portant component of both the UV-resis-tance and mechanical properties of the finished plastic article. There is a signifi-cant body of research into the linkage between carbon black morphology, in-cluding particle size, and UV perfor-mance. There is also anecdotal evidence demonstrating the linkage between dis-persion quality and overall weatherabil-ity. In this study, Cabot will demonstrate that incremental improvements of car-bon black dispersion can positively in-fluence the expected life of plastic arti-cles. With industry standard carbon blacks as a reference point, Cabot documents the morphological consid-erations of UV energy absorption and presents laboratory data demonstrating the link between dispersion and weath-erability as well as between morphlogy and weatherability.

J. V. Accorsi, Billerica, Massachusetts (USA)

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