Innovation is a collaborative process that includes continuous improvement of our products and processess -- and creation of new ones that add value for customers.

With more than 150 years of experience, we truly understand the power of innovation and its potential for value creation and contribution to a more sustainable world.

Rain Carbon Inc.'s research-and-development teams thrive at  improving the properties of our products to maximize performance. We anticipate our customers' future needs and develop sustainable solutions to improve their business performance. This can take the form of reducing the consumption of energy or raw materials, by decreasing the impact on the workplace and environment, or by improving the properties of the end products.

Thanks to the efforts of our R&D team, the properties of coal tar pitch (CTP) have improved significantly in recent decades. In 2001, the high-performance binder CARBORES®, a RÜTGERS innovation, was introduced to the market. CARBORES® contains 90 percent fewer toxic substances than traditional electrode binder materials, and has opened up new markets and opportunities -- especially in the refractory industry.

In 2013, the R&D experts from our Rain CII and RÜTGERS business joined forces under the RCI umbrella to optimize the use of calcined petroleum coke (CPC) and CTP in the manufacture of anodes for production of aluminum. We now operate a  state-of-the-art pilot anode facility in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, and have extensive development work underway to improve the performance of anode materials.

More recently, we introduced our PETRORES® specialty coatings for lithium-ion batteries and energy-storage applications, as well as our NOVARES pure® hydrogenated hydrocarbon resins that offer a level of purity that will enable our customers to meet evolving regulatory requirements and growing demand by end-users for cleaner and safer raw materials in consumer products such as food packaging and sanitary products, such as diapers.
 
In 2022, we expect to begin commercial production of our proprietary, value-added anhydrous carbon pellets (ACP). Once commercially available, our calcined ACP will be used in the production of anodes, which should reduce the energy consumption and emissions of aluminum smelters. It will also enable us to increase our green petroleum coke utilization rate, since ACP facilitates the productive use of the fine particles in the raw material that are not recovered as product during the calcination process.
 
As an innovation leader in our industry, we have published more than 20 technical papers and received numerous patents over the last 15 years. Rain Carbon and our businesses have a long history of working collaboratively with customers, and we are globally recognized for our expertise in carbon-based products and advanced materials. Some of the initiatives offered with our customer technical services activities include the following:
  • Provision of laboratory work on specific projects for customers.
  • Initiation and management of industry-wide round-robin programs.
  • Organization of technical symposia that provide an opportunity to share knowledge on how our end products are used.
  • Frequent participation and presentation at technical conferences around the world.
  • Audits of plant operations to identify potential improvement opportunities and provision of technical resources to identify and resolve quality and process inefficiencies.

Innovation needs creativity and our goal is to encourage and capture the creativity of each of our 1,750 employees. We believe in a work environment that encourages new ideas and enables our employees to contribute to the culture of innovation we seek for ourselves and our customers.

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