Nowadays there are three main types of plastic colorants in the world: color powder (powder colorant), masterbatch (solid colorant), and colorant (liquid colorant).
First, let's understand the color powder.
What is powder colorant? It is the first generation of colorant and the most primitive coloring process. It is a direct method of coloring plastic particles with color powder (pigment or dye) with appropriate amount of powder additives, also known as dry method coloring.
This initial coloring method has its advantages:
1. good dispersibility.
2、suitable for small batch of plastic processing.
3, low cost, eliminating the consumption of labor and materials in the processing of masterbatch and color paste.
But the disadvantages are also obvious:
1、Serious flying dust pollution, which seriously affects the working environment.
2, The hopper of the extruder is not easy to clean.
3、It is not practical in blown film and spun silk products.
How to overcome the drawbacks of color powder has become an urgent problem in the plastic coloring industry, and after continuous exploration by researchers, a new coloring process has been developed: masterbatches.
Masterbatch is the second generation of colorants for plastic industry. By adopting a specific process and corresponding equipment, the pigment (or dye stuff) is mixed into the carrier material under the action of additives. Through heating, plasticizing, stirring and shearing, the molecules of the pigment powder and the molecules of the carrier resin are finally fully integrated together. Then made into masterbatches of similar size to the resin.
It has obvious improvement compared to the first generation of color powder process, and its advantages are.:
1.Improves the environmental pollution problem caused by the flying of color powder.
2. easy to change colors during use, without special cleaning of the extruder hopper.
3.Highly targeted, simple color matching and easy quantification.
4.It can reduce the aging of resin performance caused by the secondary processing of plastic products, which is conducive to the improvement of the service life of plastic products.
5. compatibility is significantly better than color powder coloring.
But it also brings new problems, and also has some insurmountable shortcomings, such as:
1. Poor dispersion compared to color powder.
2. High cost, one more manufacturing process, dyeing cost is higher than color powder coloring.
3. The performance requirements of masterbatch are high. The surface of plastic products often have undispersed spots, color spots and patterns, and the use of masterbatch is restricted due to its compatibility and dispersibility.
Since color powder and color masterbatch have shortcomings, is there a better coloring solution? With the continuous exploration and development of technology, the liquid colorant was born!
Liquid colorant overcomes the application shortcomings of color powder and masterbatch. It has obvious advantages in all aspects of performance. Such as.:
1、Low addition ratio, minimum 0.01% significant cost saving.
2, excellent dispersion, more uniform and consistent color, more brilliant colors, products with higher gloss; color stability, reduce coloring defects.
3、The material only goes through a high temperature process, keeping the physical properties of the raw resin unaffected.
4, more optimized inventory management, only a small space is needed to complete the storage of liquid colorant. Save three quarters of storage space compared to masterbatch. Reduce the overall inventory and working capital pressure.
5、 Simple liquid colorant adding equipment, stable and controllable low cost, simple and fast color change process, improve the freedom of production scheduling, save labors, machines and energy losses.
6、 Suitable for all polyolefin (such as PP/PE), polystyrene resin (PS), PET resin and other engineering resins.
Of course it also has a little disadvantage.:
1、 The stock cycle of liquid colorant type products is shorter than that of masterbatch products.
2, Liquid colorant needs special colorant adding equipment.
Liquid colorant has high technical requirements, and the domestic market in China is almost monopolized by the products of Europe and America and other developed countries. It is the urgent task to develop and grow the national brand of liquid colorant industry. It is the important work of the coloring agent industry to have independent intellectual property rights and guarantee the healthy development of plastic industry. Shanghai ColorWay New Material Co., Ltd. is dedicated to the research, development and production of plastic colorants and functional additives for beverage and food packaging industry. The products developed by the company are low carbon, environmental friendly and high color fastness, providing customers with new coloring solutions that are more stable, cleaner and more automated, as well as providing one-stop coloring and functional additive solutions to create real value for customers.Liquid colorants have a wide range of development prospects, has become the main development trend of the colorant industry. China is a large manufacturing country, liquid coloring industry development space is very huge, bright prospects, the future is promising!