Carbon Black China 2016 will be held at the Hainan New Yantai Hotel in Haikou, Hainan province from March 18 through 22, 2016. CBC is held in China every other year (the 2013 conference was held in Kunming). This will be the 15th session for this prestigious conference, which is always comprehensive, well organized, and well attended. Notch will present a keynote address at the conference. More information as details are released. Hainan is China’s southernmost province, a tropical island in the South China Sea.
This week, Hankook TIre announced it has successfully completed its ride and handling tests for its latest non-pneumatic tire (NPT), iFlex. Hankook has been researching NPT technologies since 2011, and the iFlex is the fifth NPT concept tire that Hankook has released.
According to Hankook:
The company put the iFlex through a serious of rigorous tests designed to push the tires to their limits in five categories: durability, hardness, stability, slalom (zigzag) and speed. In the speed test, the electric car equipped with iFlex tires reached 130km/h. The impressive results in all five categories demonstrated that the NPTs could match conventional tires in terms of performance. At the same time, these results are expected to help the company solidify its position as a global top-tier tire company and, give new momentum to its future-oriented R&D capabilities.
Construction of the iFlex is centered on a new type of uni-material designed to maximize the tire’s eco-friendly potential. From a manufacturing standpoint, the material used during product construction significantly enhances the energy efficiency. From a product standpoint, the material allows the iFlex to be recycled with greater ease. Hankook Tire then went one step further, integrating new tire construction techniques to simplify the manufacturing process from eight stages to just four, thus further reducing the company’s carbon footprint.
This Hankook promotional video from 2013 shows the basic concept:
On July 1, Solvay held a ceremony to mark the beginning of production of highly dispersible silica at its new plant in Wloclawek, Poland. The plant will serve Central and Eastern Europe, with a focus on energy-saving tires. With 85,000 tons of annual capacity dedicated to Solvay’s latest HDS technologies it will create more than 100 jobs in the Pomeranian region. The site will produce Solvay’s most advanced grades of HDS, a reinforcing agent in the tire rubber that reduces rolling resistance and improves fuel economy. Solvay’s HDS brands include Zeosil® PREMIUM and Efficium®, another Solvay Silica invention, which helps tire makers to raise productivity levels for both car and truck tire compounds. With Wloclawek, Solvay’s Silica has a strong global footprint with nine sites across Europe, South America, North America, and Asia. In South Korea, Solvay is building a plant that will also produce Efficium® and, once on stream, raise Solvay’s annual silica capacity by close to 50 percent between 2014 and 2016.
