SPECIALITY chemicals firm BASF is increasing by 50% its production capacity of Kerosin, a branded phenolic resin used as a tackifier for tyre manufacturing, at Ludwigshafen, Verbund in Germany.
The company has been producing Koresin from acetylene and t-butylphenol at the site for more than 70 years.
Likewise, a second production line is being built and is scheduled to start operations in 2014.
“We are modernising and expanding our Koresin facility to meet our customers’ increasing demand also in the future,” said Dr. Axel Kistenmacher, Business Manager Rubber Intermediates, BASF Intermediates
division, and added,“We are additionally improving supply reliability by setting up a second production line.”
Apart from car and truck tyres, Koresin is also used to manufacture tyres for aircraft and agricultural vehicles. Other applications include abrasion-resistant belt conveyors for heavy loads.
According to BASF, various layers based on different rubber mixes are combined prior to the process of vulcanisation, during tyre production. Small quantities of Koresin are sufficient to ensure homogeneous adhesion and crosslinking of the different tyre components. At the same time this makes the end products safer and more durable. The use of Koresin facilitates advance production of traditional as well as modern high-silica rubber formulations, enabling them to be stored and transported for a long period. This eases time constraints in consecutive process steps and allows for greater flexibility in production.
In addition to Koresin, BASF offers further products that are used in the tyre and rubber industries: tertiary butylamine (tBA) and morpholine, which are both key raw materials for the manufacture of vulcanisation accelerators.