Concrete & Admixtures

Evonik offers innovative, tailor-made solutions – particularly in our core competencies: silicones and oleochemicals. Using our diverse range of molecular components, we can design new products for admixtures, mortars and industrial building materials.

Under our leading SITREN®, SITREN AirVoid®, TEGOSIVIN® and TEGO® Antifoam brand families we offer our construction customers five different management systems to support them in their concrete admixture projects:

• Air entraining agents and defoamers for Air Void Management
• Hydrophobing agents for Protection Management
• Shrinkage reducing admixtures for Curing Management
• Mold release agents for Release Management
• Wetting agents, dispersants and defoamers for Formulation Management

Our range of synthetic SITREN AirVoid® air entrainers do not suffer from the quality fluctuations associated with natural active ingredients by creating stable, and homogeneously distributed air voids with the main purpose of stabilizing the air entrained with the water during mixing. Depending on the requirements, our portfolio of air stabilizing additives can optimize the size, content, and distribution of the air voids to provide more efficient construction.

Benefits of choosing SITREN AirVoid® Air entrainers:

• Increased durability through better freeze-thaw/de-icing salt resistance
• Cost-effective design and lightweight construction improves processing and workability optimizing construction costs and entire life cycle management
• Ideal for the manufacture and processing of air-entrained concrete

Plasticizers and superplasticizers offer numerous advantages, but also increase the air content in the concrete leading to a loss of strength. Our SITREN AirVoid® defoamers are based on a broad range of modified anionic surfactants and organo-modified siloxanes, which allow air voids to be selectively removed from the system to make air content in the concrete controllable. This not only results in higher mechanical strengths, optimization of the surface and easier workability, but also meets the highest demands of aesthetics and durability. Our high-quality defoamers can be dosed easily and can either be added to the plasticizers or added directly to the concrete to provide excellent compatibility in aqueous polymer solutions. Used in combination with our air entrainer SITREN AirVoid® 601, our defoamers can achieve a more targeted control of the air void size and the air void size distribution.

Benefits of choosing SITREN AirVoid® defoamers:

• Reduces air content to provide smooth and defect-free surfaces
• Better compressive and tensile strength improves durability and resistance

Our TEGOSIVIN® water-proofing protection solutions protect buildings and infrastructures against all forms of precipitation.  By minimizing the infiltration of water and dissolved pollutants, our silicone-based water repellents help to maintain the water vapor permeability to prevent deterioration and reduce maintenance costs.  Additionally, TEGOSIVIN® hydrophobing agents reduce water and salt transport in building materials to minimize unsightly crystalline efflorescence to ensure the high-quality, highly aesthetic architecture demands of flawless building surfaces is maintained.

Benefits of choosing TEGOSIVIN® Hydrophobing agents:

• Excellent beading effect reduces dirt pick-up and facade cleaning costs
• Complete hardening with no sticky surfaces ensures good paint adhesion and more versatile design possibilities
• Better freeze-thaw/de-icing salt resistance and steel corrosion ensures better durability and reduced maintenance costs

Caused by low humidity, sun and wind weather conditions, internal dehydration or chemical/mineral reactions, the volume, shape, and strength of cement-based products can be affected by a change in the water balance resulting in deformation and cracks.  Our new generation of SITREN® shrinkage reducing agents developed in close cooperation with the admixture industries help our customers to meet the technical, aesthetic, and ecological demands. Thanks to their extremely low VOC content, SITREN® shrinkage reducing agents meet the most stringent ecological label requirements such as EMICODE EC1PLUS – without any dosage restrictions. They frequently out-perform other commercially available products by reducing drying shrinkage as well as plastic shrinkage to enhance the workability of the cementitious system whilst having no effect on the setting process and durability.  

Benefits of choosing SITREN® shrinkage reducing agents:

• Reduced capillary pressure and pore tension minimizes shrinkage to extend life cycle
• Better dispersibility and wetting optimizes water content to reduce cracking and improve durability
• New low VOC raw material improves sustainability and resource efficiency

Achieving high aesthetic standards without any visible defects mean mold release agents must not impair the curing process of the fresh concrete to provide smooth and visually perfect concrete surfaces. Depending on the application, very different demands are made on release agents including environmental protection, so our solvent-free SITREN® release management solutions have been designed for almost all molding processes and are readily biodegradable.

Based on renewable raw materials, our SITREN® MR range of concentrated mold release agents deliver outstanding release performance by preventing concrete discoloration, surface residues and the corrosion of metal molds that can also impact on further processing (paints, plasters, and other coatings), they also set the highest health protection and work safety standards.

Benefits of choosing SITREN® mold release agents:

• Emulsion technology that does not impact the hardening process or cause discoloration while improving processing for excellent surface aesthetics
• Corrosion protection reduces formwork and cleaning for cost-effective and durable construction
• Renewable raw materials offer biodegradable resource efficiency and environmental protection

Today’s formulations for the construction industry consist of a complex combination of a wide range of different raw materials, admixtures, and additives. To meet the technical, economic, and ecological demands placed on modern building products, all components have to be matched to enable all the "wheels" - no matter how small, to accurately and reliably engage with each other. Our process and performance additives influence the interaction of the different components by performing a wide range of critical functions during the manufacture, processing or final product finishing to improve the efficiency and performance of these systems.

Our broad chemical portfolio of organically modified siloxanes, oleochemicals, polyethers, polyacrylates, nonionic amphoteric and cationic surfactants enable us to offer our customers innovative, tailor-made and solution-oriented products and concepts to meet their numerous objectives.  Our additives can also be used to change surface properties and modify the performance profile to match the desired application. Surface tension for example, can be modified to match the application, or the wettability of the surface can be modified from heavily hydrophobic or lipophilic, to particularly hydrophilic and lipophobic to affect the bonding properties of surfaces.

Regardless of the specific objective, our product portfolio aims to achieve solutions of the highest quality and optimal efficiency.