A special committee on recovered carbon black (rCB) at ASTM International has introduced its first standard defining conditions for the rCB industry.

The standard comes at a time when carbon black is still viewed as somewhat new recycled merchandise that the expanding commercial tire and plastics sectors are using, one of the ASTM members pointed out.

Currently, the organization is working on introducing terminology that would be shared by the producers and all other stakeholders – this is expected to facilitate communication between industry players. The group says that even though carbon black and “char” products rely on the same process of recovery, the materials are actually different. Moreover, their properties when they are applied in rubber are not the same. Therefore, ASTM thinks that by introducing a regulated norm, the value of carbon black can be easily distinguished from “char”.

Article by ASTM.