Q1. What is masterbatch?

Like concentrated juice, many fillers or additives used in compounding formula can be compounded as high dosage pre-dispersed resins. Masterbatch can be diluted with base polymer during process. Its benefits include better dispersion, avoid contamination, easy handling, smaller volume on shipping or storage. Comparing to super compounding, using masterbatch might save cost of raw materials depending on the cost of masterbatch.

 

Q2. What benefit of using masterbatch?

  • Adjustable
    For those formula with minor additive, you can adjust the dosage of additive by masterbatch easily, like color masterbatch.
  • Cost
    Sometimes adding small dosage of masterbatch is cheaper than using compound at all. But masterbatch may be very expensive by itself, the total cost may not be cheaper than compounds.
  • Clean and accurate
    For those additives of liquid or fine powder, using masterbatch can avoid contamination and make sure the precise dosage.

 

Q3. Can we make everything into masterbatch?

Not everything can be made into masterbatch. For example, glass fiber reinforcement compound is not recommended to be produced by masterbatch. Double processes will reduce the length of glass fiber by high shear which loses the strength of the material. It’s common for engineering plastics containing over 30% glass fiber, the masterbatch must be over 30% much, but it’s not easy to make polymer with over 60% glass fiber.

 

Q4. Can you make masterbatch fill off 100% filler?

Typically, a masterbatch needs a carrier to cover the filler (additive of the function) which we are unable to achieve very high dosage of filler.

*Certain organic filler can be pelletized itself by compounding, that’s a different story.

 

Q5. What is the carrier in the masterbatch?

The carrier must be capable to blend with high dosage of filler and the polymer it will be compounded with. The filler should be able to be dispersed in the carrier well. The carrier should work with base polymer perfectly but necessary to be the same. PE is popular to be used as carrier and the masterbatch can be used on PP.

 

Q6. Does Polyalloy make color masterbatch?

We do not make regular color masterbatch. At the moment, we only supply a food grade of biodegradable color masterbatch and its color is only in black.

 

Q7. I am a manufacture of certain filler. Can you make a masterbatch with my filler?

Our service PolyLab offers customized compounding. It’s a good way to develop your masterbatch with our professional team.

 

Q8. How do you make a masterbatch?

We make masterbatch by twin screw extruders. It offers very good dispersion with high shear. Adjustable feeders are flexible to optimize the quality.

 

Q9. Is there any masterbatch you can’t make?

Since we are using twin screw extruders, we can’t make a masterbatch with a filler of very low bulk density. It’s not efficient to feed a filler with low bulk density into a twin extruder. A kneader is a better option for such formula.

 

Q10. How can I tell the quality of a masterbatch?

It’s pretty difficult to tell the performance of a masterbatch until mixing with polymer. But there are some tests which can control the quality of a masterbatch. Density and ash are two basic issues to qualify a masterbatch. But these data won’t be reliable with organic fillers or similar density. I recommend to test it on TGA. MFR, RV or IV is a way to show the degradation of a masterbatch, but it’s difficult to test them on high dosage of inorganic filler. Filter test is for seeing the dispersion of a masterbatch, mainly for the masterbatch with inorganic filler.