AKRON—Rojin Belganeh, technical and marketing director at Frontier Laboratories-North America, is one of the nearly 50 presenters set to speak at the International Tire Exhibition & Conference, planned for Sept. 11-13 at the John S. Knight Center in Akron.
Her presentation, "Quantitative Analysis of Additives in SBR by Thermally Assisted Hydrolysis and Methylation GC/MS," will explore the Reactive Pyrolysis-GC/MS (RxPy) with TMAH (Tetramethylammonium hydroxide) method, examining the efficacy and viability of reactive pyrolysis GC/MS of a vulcanized SBR sample using TMAH for rapid and straightforward determination of free fatty acids.
In preparation for the program, Rubber & Plastics News asked Belganeh to consider a few tire industry-related questions.
Q. What's the biggest challenge your customers are asking you to tackle today?
A. A lot of our prospects are dealing with analytical challenges in their laboratories when using different instrumentations. These challenges can be the amount of time needed to do sample preparation, sample pretreatment, complying with different regulations (especially for manufacturers), obtaining detailed information about the composition of different samples, being able to perform contamination analysis, quality assurance and control testing, etc.
What trends are pushing your company to innovate?
One of our driving forces to innovation is solving the current analytical challenges.
How will the supply chain for tire manufacturing differ in five years from what it is today?
There are more regulations today that manufacturers need to comply with. Also, cost and time efficiency in the manufacturing process are two critical factors that tire manufacturers are constantly trying to improve using new technology and analytical instrumentations for their product formulation, quality control, and quality assurance.
When it comes to the future of the tire industry, what opportunities are you most excited to embrace?
Increase awareness on our technology and instrumentation that enhance efficiency and effectiveness of analytical testing in tire manufacturing industry.
The International Tire Exhibition & Conference, set for Sept. 11-13 in Akron, is dedicated to exploring the latest technology and innovations behind tire design and manufacturing. Learn more at itec-tireshow.com.