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Improving the Performance of Your Adhesives and Sealants with Specialty Minerals Precipitated Calcium Carbonates and Other Minerals

The building of houses, offices, and factories; production of cars, trucks, buses, and airplanes; and installation of airfields and highways are all critical manufacturing and infrastructure applications using high-performance and general-purpose sealants based on a variety of polymers. In addition, the assembly of products of all types, including transportation products as well as appliances, furniture, and toys, depends on a wide range of adhesives. Many of these sealants and adhesives can be made better—offering higher performance at lower cost—with Specialty Minerals Inc.’s (SMI’s) precipitated calcium carbonates (PCCs), ground calcium carbonates (GCCs), ground dolomites, talcs, and barites.


Specialty Minerals Products for Sealants and Adhesives
SMI carbonate, talc, and barite products are functional fillers adding performance and reducing costs. Click on one of these product types to read more about the SMI grades, performance functions, and applications in specific adhesive and sealant systems:

  • Precipitated Calcium Carbonates – nano and ultrafine PCCs, 0.06 to 0.15 micron in size, build true thixotropic structure in sealants and adhesives when used at a 10 percent or higher loading. PCC as a rheological additive provides viscosity, thixotropy, shear thinning, and yield value for economical control of slump, sag, and extrusion or spray-application rates. The nano and ultrafines also reinforce the polymers, increasing tensile strength and modulus. Fine and medium PCCs provide lower thixotropy for horizontal applications where sag control is not critical. Grades of both coated and uncoated PCCs are manufactured in SMI plants in the U.S and U.K.
  • Ground Calcium Carbonates – 3 to 16 micron cost-reducing fillers add viscosity, but insufficient thixotropy for rheological control. High-brightness GCCs are mined and ground in Adams, Massachusetts, and Lucerne Valley, California. The SMI plant in Canaan, Connecticut, produces ground dolomites (calcium magnesium carbonates) which tend to have lower oil absorptions (allowing higher loadings) but lower brightness than the GCCs.
  • Talcs – platy, hydrophobic, inert fillers that can improve the weatherability and water resistance of caulks and sealants based on moderate durability polymers. Talcs add sandability and smooth finishes to auto body fillers and tape joint compounds as well as stiffness and strength to adhesives.
  • Barytes / Barites – dense, inert, sound- and radiation-absorbing fillers for special sealants and adhesives.

 




Sealants and Adhesives using SMI Precipitated Calcium Carbonates and Other Minerals
Most sealants and many adhesives use a SMI product to improve rheological, physical, and/or cost properties. To read more about their applications, click on one of these links:

Usually, the choice of functional mineral filler depends mainly on the system’s base polymer or resin. You can read more about performance of SMI minerals in some of the more commonly used polymer systems by clicking on one of these links:

 

 

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