Recently, there has been a major technological breakthrough from the leader in the domestic carbon black industry, which officially released a new type of super wear-resistant and low hysteresis carbon black L21.
The advent of this product has successfully solved the “magic triangle” paradox that has plagued the global tire industry for many years. It has found a perfect balance between reducing rolling resistance, improving wear resistance and ensuring wet skid resistance. It has provided key underlying material support for the development of high-performance tires and new energy vehicle tires in China.
In the field of tire manufacturing, rolling resistance (related to energy consumption), wear resistance (related to lifespan) and wet skid resistance (related to safety) are called the “magic triangle” of performance, and the three are often incompatible.
The traditional approach usually involves sacrificing one party in exchange for the other.
The L21 carbon black launched by Black Cat Co., Ltd. starts from the underlying material science and completely breaks this technical ceiling.
It is reported that L21 is a new generation of functional materials built on its own R&D platform. Its core breakthrough lies in two major innovations.
The first is the structural art of “hardness and softness”.
L21 achieves the unification of higher structure and wider aggregate size distribution through innovative processes.
It builds a “sparse but not scattered” three-dimensional support network inside the rubber, which not only ensures extremely high reinforcement effect and wear resistance, but also optimizes filler dispersion and greatly reduces the energy loss of the tire under dynamic deformation.
The second is the interface magic of “strong glue”.
The R&D team carried out precise functional modification on the surface of L21 and introduced highly active oxygen-containing functional groups.
These functional groups are like “strong glue”, forming a strong bond with the rubber molecular chains, effectively reducing the internal friction and slippage between the molecular chains, and fundamentally reducing the hysteresis heat generation.
In the actual test with strict standards, tires equipped with L21 carbon black showed a full range of performance leaps.
It is more wear-resistant and has a longer life, and its wear performance is much better than that of traditional super-wear-resistant carbon black, which directly extends the tire mileage; it is more energy-saving and environmentally friendly, significantly reducing high-temperature loss factors and compression heat generation, significantly reducing tire rolling resistance, helping fuel vehicles reduce fuel consumption, and effectively extending the cruising range of electric vehicles; it is safer and more reliable, and the reduction in driving temperature greatly improves the durability and anti-fatigue safety of tires under harsh conditions such as high speed and heavy load.
As a key link in the upstream of the industrial chain, high-end carbon black has long relied on imports.
Black Cat shares did not let L21 stay in the theoretical stage, but laid a solid industrialization path for it.
As early as 2020, the key technology production line of L21 was built; in 2022, the project passed an authoritative appraisal and was unanimously recognized as “internationally advanced, domestically leading” level; in 2023, L21 officially entered the mass production stage, and plans to increase the production capacity to an annual output of 20,000 tons in 2025.
Feedback from the market has verified its core strength.
At present, L21 has successfully been recognized by many domestic leading tire companies and implemented in batches, effectively completing the domestic replacement of imported high-end carbon black.
Currently, the global tire industry is facing the challenge of increasingly stringent energy efficiency regulations such as EU labeling laws. At the same time, new energy vehicles have put forward more extreme requirements for “low rolling resistance”.
The large-scale mass production of Black Cat L21 comes at the right time.
Industry insiders pointed out that for Chinese tire brands to continue to make breakthroughs in the global value chain, they cannot do without material innovation in the upstream supply chain.
Using L21 as a sharp knife, Black Cat has not only improved its profitability and voice in the high-end specialty carbon black market, but also acted as the “invisible hero” behind Chinese tires, injecting strong “material confidence” into Chinese tire brands to overcome technical barriers and participate in global high-end competition.
