We interviewed our Head of Materials, James McKeag, who gave us a glimpse behind the scenes into the science behind what we do here at Watts Urethane and talked about what we’re doing to source a replacement for mboca which will be an industry wide challenge by the end of 2021. Here at Watts we’re looking to find a solution to this by the end of this year so that we’re well ahead of the curve when it comes to replacing this curative.
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Transcript:
My name is James McKeag, I’m the Head of Materials for Watts Urethane Products. I’ve been with the business for 4 years, my role involves three things. I do production support, so making sure that our various materials tick over nicely day to day. I handle customer issues or I provide solutions to their various problems and I’ve been very involved in new product development.
One of the newest product developments we’ve been involved in recently is the generation of a soft grade of polyurethane to use in centrifugally cast floor squeegee sheets. the traditional range of products in our centrifuge cast sheet goes down from a 55 shore which is a soft rubber up to a 95a which is approaching a hard plastic. these products would go down from a 50a down to a 35a.
At that softness it’s white tricky to maintain a good abrasion resistance, good tensile properties, but our new system has good abrasion resistances above rubber and is also antimicrobial and has anti-fungal properties as well.
One of the more raw material focussed projects that we’ve got on at the moment is the replacement of Mboca. Mboca is going to be an issue for the entire Polyurethane industry, it’s a curative that’s been used widely for its good processing and its good quality of product in the cured material. the problem is that it’s a carcinogen so it has to be handled very carefully. As a result, the EU is actually making it illegal at the end of 2021 to use Mboca in polyurethane. We’re trying to get ahead of the game and we’re looking to replace it by the end of this year. We’ve trialled a number of different alternatives in tyre processing, industrial parts, mechanical properties and we’ve got a number of viable alternatives that we’re looking to put into pilot trials by the end of this month.
My favourite thing about working for Watts Urethane is the level of variety in the work we do, for a chemist like me there are a lot of different material systems, and different hardnesses like I’ve said from soft rubber up to hard plastic. There are lots of different applications, we do marine environments, we do centrifugally cast sheets, we do wheel and tyre so there’s always something new to look at, new avenues to chase and I’m quite a practical chemist so there’s ample opportunity for me to get my hands involved and be out there casting with the staff. I really enjoy that element of it as well.