Polymers in the industrial & construction field

Elastic polymers have an extremely wide range of applications in the industrial and construction field. These range from the automotive and metalworking industries, the printing and building materials industries, the manufacture of products for the interior sector, to the area of new construction and renovation work. Kuraray, with its styrene block copolymers, liquid rubbers and alkaline water-soluble polymers , serves key areas of application with high-performance materials. The materials and products meet requirements for increased performance, flexibility, durability and specific properties such as water and gas tightness, as well as sustainability, environmental compatibility and recyclability.

As an innovative supplier of industrial and construction solutions, Kuraray provides its customers with materials to manufacture products of long-lasting, high quality and with outstanding mechanical performance. Last but not least, customers benefit from our decades of experience and extensive chemical engineering expertise, which enables us to provide them with reliable, high-performance products that meet the highest safety standards and quality requirements.

Applications for industrial & construction usage

Kuraray materials for industry and construction meet the high quality requirements of manufacturers and users alike, and are used to manufacture long-lasting products.

Below you will find examples of applications for our materials in industry and construction. If you have any questions about these or other possible applications, please contact us.

Flooring

Kuraray’s materials for flooring offer reliable quality at every step. HYBRAR™, the unique block-copolymer with polystyrene end blocks and a vinyl bonded rich poly-diene mid-block, is a damping performance optimizer and an alternative to PVC. Flooring based on HYBRAR™ 5000-series and HYBRAR™ 7000-series is particularly suitable for heavily used rooms, because it is extremely durable, almost completely abrasion-resistant and it retains its shape and elasticity.

The sustainability and health-safety of flooring is becoming increasingly important, in the private as well as the public sector. This is a key requirement in various buildings, especially kindergartens, schools, care facilities and hospitals. Unlike products that contain PVC, flooring based on HYBRAR™ does not need plasticizers and is free of chlorine as well as phthalates. That makes HYBRAR™ the more health-friendly and environmentally friendly choice. Because HYBRAR™ is almost completely odorless and has low VOC values, it conditions the air of a room.

HYBRAR™

Printing plates

Flexographic printing is a printing process used all over the world, primarily to print images and colors on flexible packaging and labels made of plastic, paper and cardboard. Special attention in flexographic printing is paid to the printing plates, on which the constant quality of the printed image depends quite decisively. Kuraray offers the SBC-type thermoplastic elastomer HYBRAR™ 5000-series and KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER for the production of printing plates, the latter being used for the production of photopolymer plates.

KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER has excellent solubility with base polymers, such as SBS. Selected grades improve cold flow resistance, provide enhanced edge definition, and allow formulation of high hardnesses to ensure optimal color transfer in specific applications. They are also the materials of choice for precision impression taking.

KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER

HYBRAR™

Industrial sealants

Sealants are an important industrial application of our materials. KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER grades are used in sealants to reliably seal surfaces in a wide variety of applications and thus prevent the escape of liquids and gases. The areas of application are broad and range from the automotive and electronics industries to the consumer goods industries, and also include the maintenance and repair sector. Depending on the application, the sealants can be applied automatically, mechanically or manually.

Just as varied and demanding as the applications for industrial sealants are, so do our products also meet different requirements. The sealants produced with them offer short fixing times with excellent sealing performance, a strong elastomeric bond, and reliable durability in harsh industrial environments, to name just a few important requirements. They demonstrate their excellent performance regardless of the material to be sealed – be it metal, plastic, glass or wood.

KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER

SEPTON™

Mortar

Kuraray’s specialty polymers are optimally matched for mortar applications, where they are used, among other things, to modify mortar density and improve the mechanical properties of the mortar. The materials convince through excellent workability and achieve an improved finish. Selected KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER series offer particular advantages in cement-based products such as render, floor screed and repair mortar. Benefits include superior adhesion to specific substrates and low shrinkage, as well as good freeze/thaw resistance or low temperature resistance and excellent hydrolysis resistance. The products are also low odor, colorless and have low VOC values.

KURARAY LIQUID RUBBER

Metal processing

Another important area of application for our materials is cooling and forming lubricants for metalworking. For economical and efficient applications, Kuraray has ISOBAM™ in its portfolio, an alkaline water-soluble polymer that surpasses the properties of conventional water-soluble polymers such as polyvinyl alcohol and cellulose derivatives. It is used for metal processing oils, hardening agents for steel, as well as lubricants for forging and casting.

To form a mold or anything that is related to metal on metal production, you need some fluid to process it, otherwise sparks can spray. In metal forming, the use of ISOBAM™ allows metal to be processed on a water basis instead of an oil basis in order to take advantage of the associated environmental benefits.

Another advantage of ISOBAM™ is its stable green strength. This strength comes into its own in powder metallurgy, i.e. the manufacture of components and tools from powder. Green strength is the strength of a material while it is being processed to its final tensile strength. ISOBAM™ helps to increase the green strength of materials.

ISOBAM™