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Seating the Beijing Olympic Stadium
Multi-functional plastic additives – the safety factor in the seating in the “Bird Nest”
By Tang Yin
The installation of the stadium seating, with key color shades “Chinese Red” and “Great Wall Gray”, marked the successful completion of Beijing’s Olympic Stadium – known as the “Bird’s Nest” – at the end of January this year. Beginning with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games, more than 90,000 spectators will soon have very close contact with the chairs.
You can imagine how high the safety requirements of the facilities will be for such a big event, and one of the requirements is that the seating must be flame retardant. The spectator may find comfort in the knowledge that the seats had a Ciba® TINUVIN® XT series light stabilizer and a specially-designed flame retardant developed by Ciba incorporated during production. So guests from all over the world can enjoy the “People’s Olympics” on high-technology seating!
The multi-functional plastic additive produced by Ciba not only enables the seats to meet European flame retardant standards, but also to satisfy weatherability requirements. When used together with Ciba® CROMOPHTAL® red pigments with good weatherability, it can guarantee that the chairs will remain intact and display color brilliance even after long-term outdoor weathering.
“For flame retardant polypropylene materials exposed to outdoor conditions, the TINUVIN XT series of light stabilizers is certainly an ideal choice”, the Ciba project manager said to this reporter proudly. Traditional light stabilizers and flame retardants interact chemically, when used together, and this could deactivate the light stabilizer and shorten the lifespan of plastic products. Therefore, the production of polypropylene plastic materials with flame retardant properties and high weatherability has always been a challenge. Ciba, however, has the solution with its TINUVIN XT light stabilizer with specially-designed flame retardant properties. In addition, to overcome the shortcoming that traditional red pigments have of fading under long-term outdoor conditions, pigments with high weatherability from Ciba – Ciba CROMOPHTAL reds – have been chosen and used for the “Chinese Red” seats. When used together with TINUVIN XT light stabilizer, CROMOPHTAL red pigments –produce an optimal synergy, laying the foundation for the comprehensively good performance of the “Chinese Red” chairs, which stay safe, durable and brilliant in color.
China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corp.) is the sponsor of the seating facilities in the “Bird Nest”, and its subsidiary, Yanshan Petrochemical Co. Ltd., undertook the R&D for the polypropylene materials for the chairs in Olympic venues, as well as the special materials for color modification. After extensive study, Yanshan decided to choose Ciba from Switzerland, one of the industry leaders in the specialty chemicals industry, as its partner because of Ciba’s strength in R&D, as well as prior success Ciba has had in these applications.
Since Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games in 2001, Ciba has been deeply involved with the stadium seating for the Olympic venues. Until now, Ciba’s additives and pigments have been successfully used in the chairs in more than ten stadiums all over the world, including Basel’s stadium in Switzerland, Munich’s Olympic Games stadium in Germany, the Formula l Shanghai International Circuit, and so on.
Because of differences in climate, environment and pigment selection, new formulations of additives and pigments had to be developed for the new project in Beijing. To optimize their polypropylene product for this project, researchers from Yanshan Petrochemical carried out a number of experiments based on the formulation developed by Ciba, with the support of Ciba’s Asia-Pacific Research and Technical Service Center in Shanghai. After a series of tests, they finally decided on the best formulation for the dedicated materials, including polypropylene resin, TINUVIN XT light stabilizer, flame retardant, pigment and other components.
Sources from Ciba told us that it was quite a tough task because of the tight timelines and overseas expertise involved. At one stage, Ciba even postponed production of other products to ensure on-time production of the chairs. Final weathering testing was done promptly at the R&D center of Ciba’s headquarters in Switzerland.
The multi-functional additive and outstanding pigments, together with technical and customer service from Ciba, have provided a safe and reliable solution for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games “Bird Nest” stadium seats. As the market leading producer of high performance colorants and additives, Ciba hopes it can also contribute to the successful building of the coming Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
Originally published in China Chemical Industrial News, translation published by kind permission.
