Basic comparison of particle size distribution measurements of pigments and fillers using commonly available industrial methods Edited by Douglas Gilliland

The Nanobiosciences Unit of the Joint Research Centre’s Institute for Health and Consumer Protection and Eurocolour, the association of European pigments, dyes and fillers industry, have carried out a program of work to evaluate a number of instrumental methods of measuring particle size distributions as required for assessing compliance versus the EU Recommendation for the definition on nanomaterials. The study has examined the use of five instrumental methods applied to a range of eight widely different but industrially relevant powder pigments. The techniques examined were Laser Diffraction (LD), Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), Centrifugal Liquid Sedimentation (CLS), Volume Specific Surface Area (VSSA) and Electron Microscopy (EM). This report describes the materials studied and the preparative and analytical methods used. Individual chapters provide an overview of the single analytical methods used together with a summary of the results obtained using each particular method. In considering the results of this study it is important to note that the aim was not to determine the optimum conditions for every individual sample but rather to produce and evaluate data which could be considered representative of that obtainable in industrial laboratories using existing instrumental facilities operated by experienced but not specialised operators. The report discusses the challenges of using these instrumental methods to obtain a simple unambiguous classification of the test materials according to the EC definition. The Nanobiosciences Unit of the Joint Research Centre’s Institute for Health and Consumer Protection and Eurocolour, the association of European pigments, dyes and fillers industry, have carried out a program of work to evaluate a number of analytical methods of measuring particle size distributions as required for assessing material status with respect to the EC Recommendation for the definition of nanomaterial. The study has examined the use of methods based on instrumentation commonly used in the pigment industry and has applied them to industrially relevant powder pigments. Authors of the report Juan Bautista Vicent Pena Itaca Grupo (Itaca) Klaus Kund Clariant Produkte (Deutschland) GmbH (Clariant) Uwe Hempelmann LANXESS Deutschland GmbH (LANXESS ) Wendel Wohlleben BASF SE (BASF) Thomas Koch KRONOS International. Inc. (Kronos) Alison Burke Huntsman United Kingdom (Huntsman) Greg McNulty Huntsman Pigments Tioxide Europe Limited (Huntsman) Angelika Hartl-Gunselmann Eckart GmbH (Eckart) Stefan Knobl Eckart GmbH (Eckart) Martin Reisinger Evonik Industries AG (Evonik) Douglas Gilliland Joint Research Centre (JRC) Neil Gibson Joint Research Centre (JRC) Birgit Sokull-Klüttgen Joint Research Centre (JRC) Hermann Stamm Joint Research Centre (JRC) Heike Liewald EUROCOLOUR The authors would like to thank Dr Robert Fischer for taking the initiative to start the project and Dr Claudia Cascio for her contribution to the preparation of the final manuscript text. Additional thanks go to Gert Roebben (JRC) for his valuable contribution in the reviewing and correction of the final version of this report.