Innovation Strategies for Emulsion Industry - Part 2

TAGS:  Waterborne Adhesives    

In the second part of this article series, a new approach to innovation for polymer emulsions industry is investigated. Like other industries, polymer emulsions industry must also innovate itself  to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Just to recap these from the first part of the article:

There is an outlook of continued future growth, mainly in Asia, but also two main challenges exist:

• Increasing commoditization of the business, and
• A difficult position in the value chain

In the past, innovation in emulsion industry was related to product or, in lesser extent, process innovation. Hence, despite the ongoing success of polymer emulsions, over the past decade or so, no real disruptive product innovations have been delivered to the market. “New” products are often developed but only with marginal improvements over existing ones, i.e. either:

• Adaption for new regions or to new applications, or
• Reactions to regulatory pressure

Also, according to the author’s observations, there is no silver lining on the horizon – that one big disruptive invention that might turn the polymer emulsions industry upside down. To acknowledge this potential future scenario of only adaptive, marginal innovations will actually open new opportunities for the emulsions industry. It is time to take an innovative look at the potential innovations in emulsions industry. There is, more than products or process technologies to innovate.

But there is not “the” emulsions industry. There are the segment leaders, big corporations, where the emulsion segment is often back-integrated in its own raw materials and where customers in many applications fields are served globally from many regional sites. But at the tail end, there are also many small local producers, who operate one or two sites with a few stirred tank reactors.

The emulsions industry also comprises of both:

• The long-established players, and
• The newcomers who fight for their share in emerging regions

Each of these players need to find their own approach to take the challenges and opportunities of the future to innovate.

Let's take a look at the strategies to bring innovative emulsion products satisfying consumers' demands to market faster...

The “Commoditized-specialty” Model Needs to Get Re-invented

There is a friction to be resolved for maybe most of the players in the market. At emulsions industry's customer-end, there is certain expectation to get provided with customized products. This includes a broad product range to choose from, formulation support and in general a high technical service level. This leads to a specialty mindset in the industry.

Consequently, most companies entertain product R&D groups next to Application Developments groups together with Technical Service groups. This leads to expensive lab set up to produce new emulsions recipes and support the formulation work at customer’s end. Therefore, customer challenges are answered with new products i.e. a new polymer emulsion with somewhat altered raw material base or production process.

This leads to an expansion both at the product end and at the tail end of the raw material base. An emulsion producer can easily have several hundreds of raw materials on its bill and same amount of chemically different products. This adds significant complexity to manufacturing, which is therefore, set up in most cases for batch operation.



But, based on their position in the value chain, the emulsions industry is pressured on the cost side. This happens from both ends. The raw material suppliers control the prices for main raw materials, such as monomers or stabilizers. The customers, who guard the formulation recipes and act as gate to the final applications, have high pricing power and often several alternatives to choose from. So actually business conditions are calling for a commodity-type economical model.

But this friction is not easy to solve. Of course, such complex products like polymer emulsions cannot be sold with just models applicable for defined intermediates or commodity materials.

Business Model Innovation

So what can be done? How to keep fulfilling the customers' need for even higher formulation versatility? Or providing better service whilst keeping the cost under control?

To solve the emulsion business model puzzle, the internal operations need to be run with a commodity model. And the external face to the customer must keep its strong specialty mindset.

To put it in other words, the solution is not more of what has been done in the past 25 years, but to re-think and build new business models. This results in questioning and transforming the self-concept of the main functions in the emulsions business.

A New Face to the Customer

In the old specialty mindset, customers with individual needs for highly qualified technical service would be served with a new product. That product would be sold based on value (product performance or service level) to them. The main function of marketing and sales was to maintain the unique selling point vs. competition by:

• Managing growth, and
• Finding the right differentiated segment approach with differentiated service levels

The new face to the customer is to listen, to understand and to anticipate. What are the new trends in emerging markets? What product will be in need in near or long future?

Emulsions companies might ask the following questions regarding an innovative customer face:

• How much technical service does our customer really need?
• How much standardization vs. individualization would actually be accepted by the market (and at which conditions)?
• How can we use new digital technologies to address existing and potential new customers better?
• What are the potential new & different services we could offer (setting the classical technical service aside)?
• Where are new segments and new markets we could serve with a different cost model?
• How can we better translate market needs into technical requirements to improve our offer?
• With whom could we partner on sales and distribution side?
• Can platforms be built and maintained?

One very important point to make is the position within the value chain. Emulsion producers supply to formulators, who themselves deliver polymer emulsion based solutions to applicators. At the moment, the application development is a shared realm between emulsions suppliers and their customers. Some suppliers have invested heavily into application technology.

For instance, leading suppliers of styrene-butadiene polymer emulsion for paper coating applications have invested into pilot coaters to support their customers in application development. Also, suppliers who focus on Paint & Coatings market, own dedicated application development centers. Hence, this strategy works well with many, small to medium-sized customers, who often don’t have the resources for extensive application development and therefore value this service. But the big players on customer’s side of the emulsions polymers value chain are very independent in their application development. And they guard their formulation Intellectual Property.

So, the question remains, who owns the value from solving the application problem:

The polymer emulsion provider or the formulator?



Certainly, the use of digital technologies such as Big Data and AI will help emulsions suppliers to gain more customer insights. This will, thus facilitate a transformation of the services and channels provided. E-Business can play a greater role in the future to create direct channels to end-users.

Covestro just launched a flagship store at Alibaba, one of the world’s biggest E-Commerce platforms.¹ Alibaba already offers many emulsions grades in his shop. Is this a chance to re-organize supply chain or a thread? The answer is, “it depends”. The emulsion polymer suppliers need to develop strategies on how to use these new opportunities. It will be important to use them as sales channels and profit generation machines, without losing control over their customer connections. They might need to:

• Re-think their relationship to existing customers, or
• Find new partners to distribute the polymer emulsions

Lean Internal Operations

On the side of internal operations, the cost structure of the emulsions business must become much more like the one for commodity chemicals. A lean, commodity-like model calls for reducing complexity and standardization. But, at the same time, the requirements from the customer end cannot be neglected. The traditional strategy of cost-cutting and process intensification will find its natural marginal end for a classical emulsion-manufacturing set-up, with high complexity and batch operation mode.

Emulsions companies might ask the following questions regarding an innovative approach to lean manufacturing:

• How can a greater diversity of customer solutions be ensured with much lesser, standardized raw materials?
• How to operate in a batch mode with throughput rates close to continuous production?
• Which tools are used in other industries to manage complexity at low internal cost?
• How can digital data models help to improve productivity and to reduce waste?
• Which technology capabilities need to get built now to maintain a superior cost position in the future?

When a business transforms from specialty to commodity mode the change occurs from batch operation mode into continuous operation. This topic is discussed in emulsion polymerization industry and academia for long time already.² This has re-gained some attention in the recent years, mainly researching micro-scale tubular reactors ^{3, 4}.

A review of the newest contributions is given e.g. by Asua⁵ or Pauer⁶. But, actually it is believed that still the majority of commercial production is based on batch operation mode. The current high diversity of emulsion formulations and the risk of cross-contamination, when products need to be changed, prevented a greater commercial application of the diverse continuous processes developed for emulsion polymerization.

Hence, there might be use cases for specific solutions. Wacker elaborated in the recent decade on processes for continuous emulsion polymerization.⁷ Given the fact that a significant part of the produced liquid emulsions is used to make re-dispersible polymer powder at the same site, a set-up for continuous production of a few powder base grades is imaginable. Also, for the large volumes of Styrene-butadiene latex continuous processes are already developed.

Besides the management of a complex product portfolio and flexible customer orders, there is one big challenge when batch emulsion processes are transferred to continuous ones. As emulsions are products by process, the polymer microstructure and therefore the application properties are defined by the current batch process conditions. For each single polymer emulsion this polymer structure has to be modeled when transferred to continuous operation.

For most polymer emulsion producers, a switch to continuous production will not be an option. They must find innovative solutions to manage batch operations in a quasi-continuous mode, with:

• High throughput mindset, and
• Very little waste or downtime

Therefore, process intensification and improved process control are main topics for the future. Faster computers and better IT tools will allow for much better analyze and predict batch mode operations. Approaches to model emulsion polymerization are researched in academia ⁸, ⁹, ¹⁰. It is also believed, that the leading suppliers are investing significant resources into predictive process control ¹¹, ¹². These are tools that must be further developed and adapted in emulsions operations.

Another big topic to ensure a lean internal set-up is a re-definition of the minimal product portfolio diversity needed to satisfy the market need. This includes an innovative look on the raw material base. This needs to be beyond classical procurement optimization. Basically the puzzle on how to ensure a maximum diversity on the application end with a minimal amount of standardized recipes and raw materials needs to get solved. With further regulatory pressure, there will be also an external driver towards a reduced raw material portfolio.

It will be worth to look across the borders on how other industries, maybe as alien as automotive industry, have addressed that issue.

• Can the emulsion industry apply a platform or modular component strategy? (creating versatility on the application end whilst staying lean on the materials side?
• Can innovative, maybe even more customized solutions be provided without tweaking the emulsions polymerization recipe? (by formulation of standardized components?
• Where can be existing partnerships along the value chain strengthened or new be formed?

Every emulsion supplier needs to find their own answer and respective strategies. It will depend on their:

• Technology capabilities
• Markets served
• Assets owned, etc.

But, it seems inevitable that new models will emerge, on how and where the emulsions create value in the chain towards an end-user application.

A New Role for Research and Application Development

The classical Research and Application Development groups need to find their new role. The tweaking of emulsions recipes need to get de-emphasized. The understanding of the interaction of emulsion polymers in highly formulated state in application needs to be emphasized. Innovation will happen in the future based on better understanding of:

• Customer needs,
• Internal, material mechanisms of the application
• The necessary design of the formulation in which the polymer emulsions contributes to the solution

The aim is high, as emulsion polymerization itself is a highly complex process, with non-linear interactions. Hence, a deeper, model-based understanding is necessary to enable a more targeted, faster, effective adaption of polymerization recipes and processes. Progress has been made in the past two decades to model emulsion polymerization under industrial conditions^{13, 14, 15}. Digital and non-digital advancements will enable and support this new task. These include:

• Improved analytical techniques
• High throughput application testing machines
• Big data tools, and
• Artificial intelligence

For instance, high throughput formulation and testing methods, originally developed and applied for catalyst or drug development, found their application in paint formulation and testing^{16, 17}.

This new role assignment doesn’t mean that classical research and application development tasks will go away. Certainly, suppliers will need chemists and engineers to support their customers in formulating the emulsions. Certainly, manufacturing will need the support for its lean initiatives. This need for research support will even be increased, when a program for lean operations as laid out above is executed in larger scale.

Also, the R&D functions need to find innovative approaches on how to master this new task with even tighter budgets. Besides the digital technologies, new ways of cooperation and partnering with academic institutions or solution providers need to be considered.

Pushing the Boundaries of Classical Polymer Emulsions Applications

I started this article with challenging the classical approach of narrowing innovation down to product innovation. And further, I suggested taking new routes towards innovation in emulsions industry by innovating the business model.

And Still: Aren’t There New Product Inventions Out to Enter the Market?

The author takes a rather pessimistic view on that, based on experience and observation. But the innovation path in chemistry is non-linear and not easy to predict. Therefore, I don’t want to conclude this article without some – more speculative – thoughts on how to innovate or even disrupt polymer emulsion product performance.

The majority of all polymer emulsions are derived from only about 10 – 12 monomers. Amongst them, Styrene, Butadiene, Vinyl acetate and the group of Acrylic acid esters (Acrylates) are on top. These 10 – 12 monomers account for maybe 90 or 95 % of all produced polymer emulsion material.

All processes follow the classical emulsion polymerization scheme, facilitating free radical polymerization. All products are polymer dispersions, with 40 – 60 weight-% polymer particles dispersed in water. And for all products, the particles are distributed in the 102 to 103 nm-scale. Reading through the literature and patents, accumulating the knowledge of now almost 100 years of R&D in this field, there is really not much left to add.

Hence, here is the first thought: Do we really know what we (collective) know? How much additional potential is buried in the data and information from these 100 years – or at least from the last 50 years of research? How can we use new, digital technologies to dig into this data? How can, for instance, artificial intelligence help us to find white spots in our knowledge in emulsion polymers?

But this approach is still backwards looking. To create a real disruptive product offer, the boundaries of existing emulsion technology must be crossed:

• Limitation to radical polymerization mechanism (and therefore, limited monomer space)
• Limitation of possibilities to control polymer or copolymer structure and microstructure
• Limitation of particle size control

In the past, there were attempts made to address three main limitations of emulsions polymerization. The principles of living or at least controlled radical polymerizations were transferred to emulsion polymerization, miniemulsion or microemulsion polymerization techniques were used. Also, metal catalysts for complex-coordinative polymerization in aqueous media were applied.

So far, despite extensive academic research, none of these approaches led to an innovative blockbuster product offer.

Living Radical Emulsion Polymerization

The progress made in living radical polymerization made it possible to transfer the mechanisms also to emulsion polymerization techniques. But, more effective ways to conduct controlled/living radical polymerization (CRP) in emulsion systems are necessary for commercial latex production without significant modification of current industrial facilities. Conducting CRP in emulsion media is more challenging than its application in homogeneous bulk. These challenges come from the intrinsic kinetics of emulsion polymerization. These include:

• Mass transport
• Slow chain growth mechanism, and
• Exit of short radicals from polymeric particles ¹⁸

Reversible Addition-Fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) polymerization techniques are the most widely used for its application in emulsion systems. They are successfully used to control molecular weight and polydispersity in the seeded emulsion polymerization of styrene ¹⁹. Also, a process for RAFT-controlled radical polymerization in emulsion has been applied to the polymerizations of isoprene and of butadiene in emulsion systems, with the goal of producing latex particles containing block copolymers of acrylic acid, styrene and isoprene or butadiene as third polymer²⁰.

Other mechanisms, such as the anionic ring-opening polymerization of episulfides have also been successfully applied in emulsion²¹.

Microemulsion and Miniemulsion Polymerization

Microemulsion polymerization involves free-radical polymerization in ultrafine monomer droplets (1–10 nm in diameter) dispersed in a continuous phase. The resultant polymer colloids generally exhibit small latex particles and very high molecular weight. This cannot be achieved by conventional emulsion polymerization ²². Polymerization in a confined environment may lead to unique polymer morphologies, e.g. tacticity and knotting.

The miniemulsion technique is a particular case in the family of heterophase polymerizations. This allows the formation of functionalized polymers by polymerization or modification of polymers in stable nanodroplets. Miniemulsions are two-phase systems that consist of finely dispersed stable droplets in a second, continuous phase. The droplets are usually created by the application of high shear forces (ultrasound, high-pressure homogenization, etc.) on a conventional emulsion formulated from two immiscible liquids. Direct, oil- in-water, as well as indirect, water-in-oil, miniemulsions can be prepared and stabilized with the appropriate surfactant. The droplets are in the submicrometer range and show a narrow size distribution. The ideal concept of individually acting nanoreactors is realized in miniemulsions because:

• The droplets are stabilized from collisions and
• Coagulation by a surfactant, and a co-stabilizer suppresses diffusional degradation

The miniemulsion technique greatly enhances the possibilities for the preparation of hybrid nanomaterials by encapsulating:

• Molecular compounds
• Liquids, or
• Solid material

Using this technique, a wide variety of novel functional nanocomposites can be generated that are not accessible with other techniques ^{23, 24}.

A wider industrial development of these “advanced” emulsion polymerization techniques would open different application fields, such as high-performance coatings or medical applications.

Polymer Emulsion Hybrids

Hybrid materials have become a major area of research and technological development owing to the remarkable properties and multi-functionalities deriving from their nanocomposite/nanohybrid structure²⁵. They are generated via the combination of functional polymers with inorganic nanostructured compounds, with the latter exhibiting size-dependent physical and chemical properties.

Silicone polymer and organic polymer containing alloy and/or hybrid emulsion compositions were provided by hybrid emulsion polymerization ²⁶. The compositions may be spray dried whenever they are desired to employ the particles in powder type applications.

Also, polymer encapsulation of inorganic silica nanoparticles was performed through emulsion polymerization of styrene and methyl methacrylate monomers ²⁷. A magnetic polystyrene lattices with particles size of 60–200 nm, narrow size distribution, and high magnetite content were attained successfully by hybrid emulsion polymerization ²⁸.

Acrylic polymer/silica organic-inorganic hybrid emulsions were synthesized by conventional emulsion polymerization and subsequent sol-gel process, to provide water-based coating materials²⁹. Also, organic-inorganic hybrid hollow spheres are prepared by using a TiO₂ – stabilized Pickering emulsion polymerization method³⁰. In addition to the work focusing on inorganic-polymer hybrids, progress is made in providing hybrids of polymer emulsions with other polymer classes.

A series of new waterborne polyurethane (PU)/acrylic hybrid latexes have been successfully synthesized. The emulsion polymerization of acrylic monomers took place in the presence of a soybean oil-based waterborne PU dispersion using potassium persulfate as an initiator³¹. Grafting copolymerization of the acrylic monomers onto the PU network occurs during the emulsion polymerization. This significantly increases the thermal and mechanical properties of the resulting hybrid latexes. This work provides a new way of utilizing renewable resources to prepare environmentally friendly hybrid latexes with high performance for coating applications.

Waterborne polyurethane-acrylic hybrid nanoparticles for application as pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) were prepared by a one-step miniemulsion polymerization³². The addition of PU into a standard waterborne acrylic formulation results in a large increase of the cohesive strength and hence a much higher shear holding time, which is a highly desirable characteristic for PSAs.

Complex Coordinative Polymerization in Emulsion

Once other monomers could be polymerized in emulsion, aqueous dispersions of polymer materials with many different properties could be provided to the market. PE or PP dispersions are currently produced by secondary dispersion, with high energy and stabilizer usage.

Initially, metal catalyzed polymerization of monomers like ethylene was investigated in water-based, emulsion processes³³. But the water sensibility of the metal complex catalysts³⁴ and problems of separation of the residues from the aqueous polymer dispersions together with processing problems hampered industrial application. Recently, less water sensitive catalyst systems were provided and aqueous polyethylene polymer emulsions were provided³⁵. Also, syndiotactic polystyrene was synthesized by emulsion polymerization using a Nickel based catalyst³⁶.

Sustainability

As a very last field for innovating polymer emulsions, the question of sustainability must be raised. The success of this class of polymers is widely based on the perception of its positive environmental impact. This is mainly by its nature of waterborne systems and therefore, reduced emission of volatile organic components (VOC) in application compared to solvent-borne alternatives. The success story of polymer emulsions is a “green” story.



But, how sustainable are polymer emulsions in real? Actually, the polymer emulsion industry is part of the classical chemical value chain. Its raw materials are derived from crude oil or natural gas. The molecules travel around the globe (several times) before providing their function in the customer’s application. Polymer emulsion products are not bio-degradable and often they cause trouble in recycling the materials they are used in. Are polymer emulsions good, or just “less bad”?

So, here is the real challenge to the emulsion producers: how could the solutions classical polymer emulsions provide today be provided in a much more sustainable way? Can polymer emulsions be 100% bio-degradable? Can the raw materials be based on renewable resources? The production of Ethylene from Ethanol sourced from bio-materials is already established³⁷. Wacker also developed a process to make its main monomer for emulsion polymerization, Vinyl acetate, from Cellulose³⁸.

But, the more disruptive question is: How can the customer’s needs be satisfied without using a chemical product at all? Are the emulsion polymers providers specialists for making and selling materials or for solving complex interface interaction problems?

These are radical but necessary questions to think through. But, it might be rewarding to at least post these questions. From a pragmatic point of view, the players in the polymer emulsions sector need to take a step-wise approach towards innovation. Whilst adapting to the most recent challenges and opportunities by developing near term solutions, they should also create an environment and ecosystem allowing for more disruptive thinking.

Even with more than 100 years history of industrial applications, polymer emulsions remain an interesting field for innovations.