Haltermann Carless: Caromax® Solvents for EC and OD Formulations

Usted puede encontrar la versión en español de este artículo aquí. Haltermann Carless: Solventes Caromax® para Formulaciones de Concentrados Emulsionables y Dispersantes de Petróleo

By Suwanie Wilathgamuwage, Technical Services and Development Manager, Haltermann Carless

Haltermann Carless is a leading international supplier of solutions for high-value hydrocarbon specialties and solvents. The company belongs to the HCS Group and operates state-of-the-art production, processing and blending facilities in Europe and the United States. This allow us to manufacture a comprehensive range of speciality products, such as performance solvents and fuels, special aromatics, pentanes, middle distillates and oil and gas products to serve various industries.

For the agrochemicals industry, for example, Haltermann Carless is a leading supplier of C10 and C12 heavy aromatics. For over 70 years, it has been manufacturing key products, well-known in the industry under the trademark Caromax®.

Agrochemical Formulations

Active ingredients in agrochemical formulations may not mix well with water by themselves. Even when they do, they may become unstable over time and prove difficult to store or to handle. To make the active ingredients useful, most formulators will add other components, known as inert ingredients, to formulate the final product for sale.

These active ingredients have a range of solubilities depending on their functional groups and molecular weight. Some active ingredients may not be soluble in water or become unstable over long periods of storage and handling. In some cases, suitable solvency into a liquid phase and storage stability are provided by the use of hydrocarbons, acting as a carrier fluid. 

Caromax® is our leading brand for special aromatic fluids. The excellent solvency of the heavy aromatic products allows them to be utilized in even the most sensitive agrochemical formulations. In a world where most agrochemical formulators have been dependent on a handful of hydrocarbon solvent products with fixed properties, they have had to develop the formulation around the solvent. Haltermann Carless takes the contrasting approach where we have a passion for working closely with our customers to develop tailored special aromatic solvent formulations. These bespoke formulations are customized to a formulator’s active ingredients solvency boundaries.



The majority of Caromax® products are applied in the development and production of Emulsifiable Concentrate (EC) and Oil Dispersant (OD) formulations.

An EC formulation usually contains an active ingredient, an emulsification agent and a petroleum-based solvent to keep the solution stable and in solution. Being one of the most adaptable formulation types, EC formulations are employed in agricultural and forestry applications, with agrochemical formulations being the largest.

OD formulations consist of an active ingredient that is suspended in an oil phase with dispersants, emulsifiers and rheology modifiers. OD formulations can prove to be more sensitive to formulate, as the active ingredient needs to be insoluble in the oil phase and stable in extended storage conditions.

Solvency Challenges

Crop formulations can be affected in numerous ways by the different solvent compositions, depending on the type of formulations. In EC formulations, for instance, cold stability is affected by the solvent composition where polarity is key in solubilising the active ingredient. In EW formulations (emulsion, oil-in-water) droplet size of the oil phase is influenced by the viscosity of the oil.

All Caromax® products are a complex mixture of heavy aromatics chemistries of C10 and C12 nature, for the Caromax® 20 and Caromax® 28 range respectively. The distribution of these complex chemistries has a significant impact on the solvency properties and long-term stability of the formulated agrochemical product. Years of formulation experience has led us to our highly specialized Caromax® portfolio — optimized for the agrochemicals market. At Haltermann Carless, we have worked closely with customers and end users to identify the ideal composition of C12 products to support EC formulations. 

Regulatory and Logistics

Caromax® 20, Caromax® 20 LN, Caromax® 28 and Caromax® 28 LN are fully REACH registered and the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved them for use as an inert ingredient in pesticide formulations applied to growing crops. These products are included in the ‘List of Trade Names and Inert Ingredients’ on the EPA’s website. They are also fully approved by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) in Canada and are published on the “PMRA List of Formulants.”

With storage and distribution locations in North America, South America and Europe, Haltermann Carless is in the position to supply products to any location globally. We welcome the opportunity to run joint research and development programs that cater to the legislative, environmental or formulation challenges of the future.

More information on our aromatics business:
http://www.haltermann-carless.com/what-we-do/special-aromatics/

Contact us directly:

Daniel Jeffery
Senior Vice President – Special Aromatics
Email: djeffery@h-c-s-group.com

Silvo Ponten
Senior Commercial Manager
Email: sponten@h-c-s-group.com

----------------------------------------------------
Media Contacts

HCS Group GmbH
Sandra Zirm
Edmund-Rumpler-Str. 3
60549 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Phone: + 49 69 695 386-0
Email:szirm@h-c-s-group.com; pr@h-c-s-group.com


Download AgroPages' latest magazine - 2017 Latin America Focus