Wacker CHEMIE, the largest player in the global silicone market, offers to rubber and plastic processors a new product, liquid silicone rubber. Injection moulding of liquid silicone rubber makes it possible to manufacture large amounts (millions of pieces) of products of extremely high quality for various applications. Made without wastes or burrs, they are resistant to aggressive environment, nonflammable, oil sweating, conductive, low- frictional.

The global market offers over 800 various grades of polypropylene made through innovative hyper nucleation and clarification technologies developed by Milliken. At present, the company is interested in offering its technologies to Russian converters.

Dariusz Lukaszewski’s report at the 4th Congress of Plastic Converters will dwell on the following issues:
– Demand for new PP grades in Russia.
– Production of innovative import-replacing PP grades in Russia.
– Consumption of new PP grades in Russia, including market needs and restrictions.

No industry can develop without modern pipeline systems. The quality of pipes influences the quality and duration of life.

The availability of newly developed composite materials creates ample opportunities for manufacturing pipes with new consumer properties, namely:
– high thermal and fire resistance;
– resistance to aggressive environment;
– abrasive resistance, etc.

NPP Mayak-93М improves polymer extrusion and polymer melt homogenization technologies to include ultrasonic methods. As a result, new specimens of equipment and experimental samples of new products have been developed.

About 60% of municipal solid wastes are recycled in Europe. In Russia, this share is negligibly small. One of the strategic mistakes made by Russian legislators is the attribution of MSW utilisation requirements to the nature protection legislation, while these requirements must be dealt with in the industrial policy. To create waste recycling industry it is needed to solve four tasks:
1. Removing the issues concerning wastes from the competence of the Ministry of Natural Resources.
2. Establishing of a body regulating activities in the wastes processing sector without the right to fine for violations of environmental standards.
3. Management of the quality of feedstock in the wastes processing industry. Arranging of a system of waste streams centralised management on a regional basis.
4. Toughening of municipalities and population’s liabilities. Reduction of the landfilled MSW share, differential payment for sorted residual wastes, reasonable tariffs.

By various estimates, polymers make 10–30% of total municipal solid wastes in Russia. Their presence makes it impossible to recycle millions of tons of garbage accumulated at authorised and unauthorised landfills across the Russian Federation.

What danger polymers in garbage create? Are all polymers hazardous? What gas purification technologies used for thermal MSW utilisation are the most effective? Can accumulated landfills be eliminated in Russia without building large industrial plants nearby? What scheme of garbage and polymer waste delivery/sorting is the cheapest and the most friendly to the environment?

Michael Zaikov, director of ZAO Bioenergetik, who has been involved in waste processing in the Moscow region for 20 years, will try to answer those and other questions in his report at a roundtable dedicated to MSW.

A team of Russian scientists have developed a cable waste recycling technology which will allow sorting tonnes of wastes of the cable industry and used cables into valuable nonferrous metals and initial polymers. A business plan concerning commercial equipment manufacture and a system of cable wastes conversion will be presented to partners and investors at the Congress of Plastics Converters.

All known technologies of waste recycling and processing have been entered the Russian market by 2010. Foreign experience shows that a rational organization of MSW processing offers a chance to use up to 90% of recycled polymers in the construction industry, for example as concrete aggregates. The incineration of 1,000 kg of MSWs yields energy equivalent to that produced by burning 250 kg of fuel oil. The real savings turn out to be even greater, since waste, unlike fuel oil, requires no expenses for its production.

When developing a thermal recycling technology, it is important to control atmospheric emissions of nitrogen dioxide and furans. Based on profitability and environmental friendliness, the following municipal solid wastes storage and recycling methods can be cited as promising: preliminary sorting, landfilling, incineration, biothermal composting, low-temperature and high-temperature pyrolysis.

Any manufacture emitting potentially hazardous substances needs a control system. Control systems, as well as production operations, have become subject to full automation.

To provide reproducibility and precision of results, samples, until recently, have been prepared only manually. The process usually took several days and heavily depended on human factor. To resolve this problem, Fluid Management Systems (USA) developed an automated sample preparation system. Its advantages are obvious: in one stage, it automatically performs full preparation of a sample without the presence or assistance of a lab technician, thus providing a precise and reproducible analysis without the cross-pollution of extracts and at minimal harmful influence on personnel. In those locations that do not require permanent monitoring, mobile posts for area inspection can be organised.

This system can be particularly useful for regional administrations of the Russian Federation to organise ecological control over industrial enterprises, or for companies that prepare samples and have to monitor emissions in accordance with the current legislation.

About 90% of DIN standards developed by the German Institute of Standardization have been recognized by the international community. Those standards cover residential and industrial construction, road building, pipelines, packaging and transportation, principles of facility operation in Germany and across the EU.

The Association of Plastic Converters, the organising committees of the Moscow International Chemical Summit and the 4th Russian Congress of Plastic Converters address the Russian government with a proposal to adopt DIN standards in long-distance and municipal road-building and pipeline laying. This measure could result in an essential increase of sales of high performance polymers and composites in the domestic market, thus giving a powerful impetus to plastic processing.

Pulp is the most widespread organic polymer on the Earth. Russia possesses 25% of the global reserves of lignocellulose feedstock in the form of forest and annual plants’ wood. Articles made of ecologically pure wood-polymer fibrillar composites are known to have a superior performance.

The report will dwell on how chemical nature, composition and structural features of wood-polymer and other fibrillar composites containing different modifiers affect the material processability using compression and extrusion. Benefits of applying thermoplastic polymer binders based on renewable feedstock in such composites will also be analysed.

Nanocomposites based on polymer matrix are being developed by many scientific centers, but their commercialization in the engineering polymers market, with few exceptions, failed despite their functional properties. On the one hand, it damaged reputation of the “nano” prefix, and on the other hand, compelled researchers to investigate why this happens to understand whether the introduction of true nanoparticles yields a nanocomposite.

The report will discuss new ways of introducing nanoparticles of layered silicates and nanodiamonds into a polymeric matrix, which were developed by a group of scientists as part of an ISTC project and attracted the interest of LSP Access International LTD and Milena Trading Ltd.

The application of polymer composites whose unique properties allow making customized structures is spreading in various industries, including aerospace, alternative energy, shipbuilding, manufacture of goods for sports and leisure, as well as construction, infrastructure, and chemical engineering.

Carbon-carbon composite materials form a separate direction both in scientific researches and industrial applications. Their development expands applications of these materials and opens new markets for them, including high temperature seals, frictional materials, heat insulation, etc.