Rosin goes by the name colophony (“resin from Colophon”) or Greek pitch. Rosin is a solid form of resin that is sourced from pines and other plants, such as conifers. Fresh liquid resin is hated to eliminate the volatile liquid terpene components in rosin production. The gum rosin contains the residue from distillation of oleoresin from pine trees.
Rosin consists of several resin acids, especially abietic acid and has various colours, from the range yellow to black. The darker colour of rosin is usually called wood rosin, sourced from solvent extraction of the stumps. Gum rosin has a semi-transparent appearance and a faint pinelike odor. This resin could become sticky when it’s warm, because when at stove-top temperature rosin will melt.
The production of gum rosin is mainly from Indonesia, Southern China, Brazil, and northern part of Vietnam. The major rosin suppliers are the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, and Portugal, so the future supply of this resin depends on the production in those countries. The use of gum rosin in industrial is diverse, this resin could be used in crude raw material figure or even in modified form. Paper manufacturing, soap industries, and lubrication oil are some typical application of the crude raw material rosin. While, the modified gum rosin contains a mixture of abietic and primaric acids plus a small amount of neutral compounds. The mixture creates an intrinsic acidity that united with other chemical properties, making this compounds could be converted to downstream derivatives that include salts, esters and maleic anhydride adducts and hydrogenated, disproportionated and polymerized rosins. These derivatives then used as the material for many industries, such as the manufacture of adhesives, printing inks, various surface coatings, insulating materials for electronic industry, solders and fluxes, synthetic rubber, chewing gums, even soaps and detergents.
Food Stuff Industry
Gum rosin is an ingredient for producing chewing gum. Hydrogenated rosin is the type of rosin that is used for producing gum rosin. It is a dominant variety from modified rosin that has a light color, and high resistance of oxidation with high thermal stability. Not only to produce chewing gum, rosin could also be used as an emulsifier, and could be a density adjusment agent for flavouring oils in beverages.
Paints and Coating Industry
For the paint industry rosin is the most common basic material. Rosin is highly soluble in organic solvents such as gasoline, alcohol, turpentine thus it is widely used in paint industries. While for the coating industry, rosin is used to produce various lacquers. Rosin can be converted into Lacquers by firstly converting it into resinate and refine it with dry oil and followed by mixing with volatile solvent. Not only coating for leather, rosin also plays an important role in producing coating for road. To produce rosin for coating road sign injuction, first rosin is converted into rosin malefic ester (disproportionated rosin), or polymerized rosin called polyols ester, this ester then used to make the thermoplastic coating.
Metal Processing Industry
In the metal processing industry, rosin is used for solding aid and metal polishing agent. Since rosin has a weak acidity matter, it could be useful for removing the oxidation film from metal surface and could erode the surface of metal. Thus the reason why lots of solding aid agents contain rosin.
Papermaking Industry
The application of rosin is mostly found in the paper making industry. Rosin played a great role as a paper sizing agent. The advantages of using rosin paper sizing agents are: rosin could prevent printing oil soaking and dispersing from the paper, it could improve the strength and smoothness of paper, and rosin could enhance the anti-abrasion of paper. However, the crystal rosin is unqualified as a paper sizing agent. This is due to the difficulty of saponification, and it could consequently make a spot on the paper, and sometimes the crystal rosin could make the pipe jam during the production.
Synthetic Rubber Industry
Disproportionated rosin or DPR is the most common form of rosin that plays a major role in the synthetic rubber industry. DPR is used as the emulsifier in the production, making the improvement in cohesion of rubber products, and the increase in heat endurance to 25%. Overall, rosin could soften and enhance the plasticity, increasing the tear strength, heat resistance, making the rubber more flexible and increase the anti-abrasion of synthetic rubber. Making the supplier of synthetic rubber could increase their product’s quality.