Over the past years and decades, factice has undergone a transformation in terms of importance:
From being a cheap extender blended with rubber or a replacement for natural and synthetic rubbers to becoming a valuable processing aid and an additive for rubber compounds.
Today, using factice in rubber compounds improves the absorption capacity of plasticizers, the extrusion and injection speed, and the resistance of the unvulcanized compound. And in the vulcanized end product, using factice produces a much better surface quality leading to improved roll grinding, for example.
Rhein Chemie offers three different product groups of natural polymerized oils. Brown factice is mainly used for dark-colored and black compounds and, for example, gives the raw compounds excellent stability. By contrast, yellow factice is incorporated in light compounds and is not extracted despite the addition of oils, benzine and plasticizers, which means that the swell resistance of the vulcanizates remains unchanged. As a white factice, Rhenopren® EPS is not restricted to vulcanizates crosslinked with sulfur but can also be used in peroxide-crosslinked compounds.