Joe Hallett

technical lead, Continua

Dr Hallett has worked in the rubber industry for over 25 years in a number of roles including product design, research and development and customer technical support. He has worked for a total of 17 years with Birla Carbon and since re-joining the company in 2019, has been part of the team developing its Continua™ range of sustainable carbonaceous materials. He is now the global technical lead for this product group and an active member of ASTM D36 working with the wider industry in developing standard for ‘recovered’ carbon black.

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Presentation

Dispersion kinetics of carbonaceous materials during elastomer mixing

Obtaining cost-effective dispersion and distribution of reinforcing particles in elastomers is a prerequisite for compound performance and, often times, a limiting factor in material utility and adoption. In this study a new procedure is developed to track, quantify and discriminate the dispersion and distribution kinetics of reinforcing particulates during mixing with elastomers in a typical internal mixer. The procedure allows for unambiguous discrimination between different types of carbon blacks of various bulk colloidal properties. The procedure can be used to compare various other particulates of interest and differentiate between incorporation kinetics versus particle size effects.