VIEWPOINT

Lamberti:
Specific Technologies
for Suspensions

Among the current crop nutrition and protection products available for agriculture,
suspension-based formulations represent a very important segment for the market, which By Federico De Pellegrini
has steadily grown year by year. This is due to the fact that these products, compared to Life Science Division Technical Manager
at Lamberti SpA
other forms of delivery, presents some major advantages for the farmer, such as ease of
use and dose combined to a reduced environmental impact thanks to the fact that they’re
water-based. Moreover, from a formulator perspective, the palette of chemical auxiliaries
that the market can offer to formulate such products is well established and very rich,
specifically designed to perform even in
making these products easily adaptable to specific requirements.
the most difficult instances. One example
However, there are still some SC specific instances that are difficult to handle even for
of such product is Envi-Pol® 871, a
skilled formulators: due to increasing pest and disease resistance in the field to single-
polymeric superdispersing agent proven
active based SCs, the crop protection products market is moving towards a wide offering
very effective for SC formulations.
of multiple active suspensions, which are not always easy to make. In addition, the request
By including this particular molecule
for more concentrated and effective formulation is pushing the limits of the formulation
in the recipe, viscosity during milling
space that are currently accessible with standard surfactants.
phase is kept well under control, making
For these reasons, Lamberti has developed a specific range of product to handle these
it possible to reach high load suspension
difficult situations while giving formulators good flexibility in formulating their products.
concentrates like Metribuzin 650 g/
Within this range, a new class of so-called “superdispersing agents” was created,
l, which is normally very challenging to
produce with standard surfactants like
TSP derivatives. Moreover, thanks to its
polymeric nature, Envi-Pol® 871 can also
help to prevent crystal growth issues: this
feature is very useful especially when
formulating with relatively soluble active
ingredients (as shown in the left figure).
Another relevant benefit of this
class of superdispersing agents is
that their chemical structure allows an
easier handling of multiple active SC
formulations. In fact there are many
examples where a combination of actives
might be hard to process in just one
milling operation, due to difference in
active hardness, log pow or melting point,

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