Additive Supplier Turns to Innovative Technology for Better Air Pollution Control and Fire Safety
Elementis Specialties, a leading maker of specialty paint additives, has installed a zeolite-based air pollution control (APC) system in its plant.
When chemist Fred Daniel launched his Jersey City, NJ-based colorants and additives business in 1957, paint manufacturing was still more art than science. The advances in chemistry, physics and engineering behind today’s materials, processes, production equipment and substrates still lay in the future. But Daniel’s 20-plus years in the coatings industry had convinced him that simply reducing the particle size of pigments and other additives — ideally, to something approaching their ultimate fineness — could make for dramatic improvement in color intensity, hiding power, weather resistance, and other qualities of most coatings products.
He was right. Over the years, Daniel, a hands-on chemist of the “old school,” developed an array of grinding and blending technologies and equipment, most of them modified to meet the needs and requirements of his specially trained workforce, and all aimed at making a better product. By 1996, when the company was acquired for $30 million by London-based Harrisons & Crosfield, Daniel Products had operations in 80 countries and enjoyed an enviable reputation as a reliable supplier of some 450 specialty products to improve the performance of paint, ink, sealants, adhesives, and floor products and related materials. Their product line included pigment dispersions, anti-foaming agents, metal chelators and other proprietary drying compounds, organo-clay thickeners, UV light stabilizers, and other additives such as micronized waxes and silica dispersions.