Looking for answers in black and white
6 November 2024
Image: Orion Carbons
Pigment suppliers are addressing recyclability and carbon footprint issues, allowing masterbatch companies to widen their portfolios.
Many thermoplastic applications rely on black colorants. Properties such as opacity, tint strength, hue, and dispersability are important. Another property increasingly being considered is the ability to be sorted in material recycling facilities using near infrared (NIR) detection. Many carbon black-based pigments are not able to be detected in NIR sortation, but a variety of other types of blacks, including complex inorganic coloured pigments (CICPs), manganese ferrites and some new bio-based blacks, can be detected by NIR