Dow Polyurethanes* New Systems to Address Industry Needs for REACH 2018 Compliant Solutions

On June 7, 2017, Dow Polyurethanes, a global business unit of The Dow Chemical Company announced the latest addition to its HYPERLAST. Elastomers family, especially developed to help the industry address concerns over the upcoming regulatory ban of the use of MbOCA in polyurethane elastomers throughout Europe.
The new HYPERLAST? 153 Series elastomer system from Dow does not contain mercury catalyst, does not need MbOCA as a curative and is REACH 2018 compliant, offering customers a proven and generally suitable alternative. REACH is a European Union regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and restriction of Chemicals.
HYPERLAST? Elastomers have already proved their functionality in many applications over the years, from dynamic bend stiffeners used in harsh offshore environments to a variety of industrial components, such as timing belts, rollers and tooling parts.
This latest addition to the HYPERLAST? family is a multi-component material that enables the processor to select tough and durable elastomers over a hardness range from 55 Shore A to 75 Shore D with just four components, which can also help reduce the number of materials in inventory.
The system components are processed at lower temperatures than the full prepolymer countertypes, allowing for energy savings in production. Keeping processing time at optimum levels, Dow’s latest elastomer allows processors to have control over the pot-life and demould time, providing flexibility in terms of the size of parts that are being produced, and is thus designed to give optimal throughput.