With 45 years in the global chemicals business, Gantrade is an experienced and responsible worldwide marketer of a broad range of value and innovation that helps our customers achieve sustained growth.
One of our key partners in the rheology and surfactants industry is Tiarco-RST, a company that offers a wealth of experience, capabilities, and leading-edge products developed over four decades in business. We believe that Tiarco-RST’s products give Gantrade customers a competitive edge, as we collaborate and create products with distinct performance advantages.
Together, Gantrade and Tiarco-RST offer a broad portfolio monomers, intermediates, polymers crosslinking chemistries, surfactants, rheology modifiers, dispersants and related products that help to advance performance dimensions in emulsion-based paints and coatings, adhesives and sealants, as well as inks and related products. Our flexibility, customer focus, professional support services and environmental consciousness make doing business with us easy. Our combination allows us to better help our customers achieve the right solution for your specific formulations.
Rheology modifiers comprise a key area of our business at Gantrade, as we are able to make a positive impact on multiple industries. Rheology modifiers give formulators tremendous advantages in developing new products to meet customer needs. We supply rheology modifiers used strategically in paints, both for waterborne paints and oil-based coatings,
Let’s take a look at our partnership with Tiarco-RST, specific to rheology modifiers, also commonly known as thickeners. Some good rheology modifier examples are the three categories of thickeners we market from Tiarco-RST: sodium polyacrylate thickeners, ASE thickeners, and HASE thickeners.
Sodium polyacrylate thickeners are versatile, aqueous polymer solutions designed to provide thickening, suspending, coating, and unique rheological properties for a host of applications. Uses for sodium polyacrylate thickeners include primary and secondary thickening of coatings, adhesives, grouts, dispersions, suspensions; thickening of liquid solutions applied by spray application; and as protective colloids and particle coatings in specialty products.
The broad product selection provides formulators with a high degree of flexibility in determining the best choice for each application. Sodium polyacrylate thickeners are neutralized, viscous solutions. Paragum thickeners are used in the thickening of natural and synthetic latexes for a wide variety of applications. Formulators may use these products to thicken styrene-butadiene, acrylonitrile, butadiene, acrylic, neoprene, vinyl acetate, and ethylene-vinyl acetate latex compounds. They are also great thickeners for latexes that have an alkaline reaction.
With regard to their physical properties, sodium polyacrylate um thickeners are supplied fully hydrolyzed and pre-solubilized at medium to high as-is viscosities. They allow for immediate thickening without having to wait for polymer equilibration. These new generation thickeners contain a balance of acrylic acid and acrylate ester borated thickeners exhibit higher efficiencies. Tiarco-RST offers numerous product grades within each set of chemistries.
Alkali swellable emulsion thickeners, also known in short as ASE thickeners, contain a balance of methacrylic acid and acrylate ester, and they are commonly supplied in liquid form. When using ASE rheology modifiers, thickening is triggered by a change from low to high pH with bases such as ammonium hydroxide or caustic. ASE thickeners are supplied at low pH and a low viscosity. When subject to a pH >8 in the coating formulation, ASE copolymers solubilize, swell and thicken the formulated coating through volume exclusion. ASE thickeners are steeply shear-thinning and well suited to high-viscosity, thick-film applications such as caulks, mastics, finishes, sealers, paints, coatings and adhesives.
Hydrophobically-modified alkali-swellable emulsion thickeners, also known in short as HASE thickeners, retain the pH dependent behavior and easy handling advantages of their ASE counterparts, but in addition to absorbing water, HASE rheology modifiers also thicken via hydrophobe association. Associative thickening offers performance properties over a wider range of shear levels and facilitates a wider range of rheology profiles than is possible with thickeners such as ASE and cellulosic offerings. They are compatible with multiple binder chemistries, where they offer a range of key performance properties, including flow and leveling, sag resistance and film build.
Gantrade and Tiarco-RST have joined forces to offer a broad portfolio monomers, intermediates, polymers, crosslinking chemistries, surfactants, rheology modifiers, dispersants and related products that help to advance performance dimensions in emulsion-based paints and coatings, adhesives and sealants, as well as inks and related products.
If you’re in the market for elite, high-performance rheology modifiers, look no further than Gantrade. Our flexibility, customer focus, professional support services, and range of manufacturing assets make doing business with us easy. Together with strong partners like Tiarco-RST, we help our customers to meet challenges and seize business opportunities with the right solutions for their specific applications. Contact us at Gantrade to learn more.