PE waxes – market leader celebrates 50th anniversary

Citation

(2003), "PE waxes – market leader celebrates 50th anniversary", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 32 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.2003.12932fad.002

PE waxes – market leader celebrates 50th anniversary

PE waxes – market leader celebrates 50th anniversary

Keywords: Waxes, Polyethers

Polishes based on polyethylene wax can be used to protect wooden floors, linoleum, expensive flagstones and inexpensive PVC flooring from soiling and physical damage.

Polyethylene waxes are also used in polishes applied to leather and furnitures.

A more prestigious application for waxes is in car polishes. The wax forms a glossy, transparent film that protects the bodywork.

Polyethylene wax can be applied repeatedly to substrates to form an invisible film that protects them and preserves their value. The chemical industry began to manufacture synthetic waxes in the 1930s. They can be produced in large quantities at a relatively reasonable price.

BASF, one of the world's leading suppliers of polyethylene waxes (Luwaxq), can look back over 75 years of experience of manufacturing waxes – in the beginning with montanic waxes. The production of polyethylene waxes has profited from the integrated high-pressure facilities at the Ludwigshafen site. At a pressure of up to about 3,500 bar, it is possible to synthesise ethylene homopolymer waxes from pure ethylene without the aid of heavy-metal catalysts. The PE Wax Plant of BASF celebrates its 50 th anniversary in 2003.

The chemical structure of homopolymer waxes and the resulting physical properties determine the applications for which they can be employed.

"Manufacturing waxes is like walking a tightrope", explained Dr Stefan Weiss of BASF Performance Chemicals. "The waxes used in polishes have to fulfil the seemingly contradictory demands of high hardness and high flexibility".

The layer of wax has to be hard enough to withstand high levels of wear and tear, but it must also be flexible. If it is too brittle it would crack when a load is applied and would no longer give any protection. The high- pressure production process enables these conflicting properties to be precisely controlled in order to obtain the required performance.

BASF's expertise in the field of high- pressure technology makes it possible to tailor the properties of waxes to the demands of the market.

Differently charged waxes are achieved by copolymerisation. Homopolymer waxes consist of identical molecules, whereas random copolymers consist of molecules of varying composition arranged in an arbitrary order. Special polyethylene waxes are also available through oxidation. These waxes are particularly easy to emulsify in water and can be used in floor polishes and similar products. BASF wax emulsions are offered to the market under the trade name Poligenq.

Waxes are very versatile: polishes for wood, plastic and leather makes use of the physical properties of waxes, and their chemical behaviour is very useful in the production of printing inks and for colouring plastics. These waxes are able to disperse pigments in plastics, which gives rise to high colour strength. Waxes are mainly added to paints and varnishes in order to enhance their scratch resistance and to obtain some degree of matting.

Modern plastic products would not be as bright and colourful without BASF waxes and there would be no fashionable metallic finishes for cars. Waxes are added to metallic paints to ensure that the aluminium pigment particles remain evenly dispersed during the drying process, which causes them to become oriented in the dry paint. The dispersing action of polyethylene waxes is also utilised in the colouration of synthetic fibres.