Binder material: Encyclopedia - Binder material

Binder (material)

A binder is a material used to bind together two or more other materials in mixtures.

Its two principial properties are adhesion and cohesion.

In art, binders have use in painting, where they hold together paints, pastels, and other materilas. They may be based on wax (see oil pastel), gum arabic, gum tragacanth or methyl cellulose (see pastel), gums, or protein, often egg white or casein.

In cooking, various are used as binders. Some of them, eg. tapioca flour, lactose, sucrose, mycrocrystalline cellulose, poly vinyl pyrrolidone and various starches are used in pharmacology in making tablets.

In explosives, wax or polymers like polyisobutylene or styrene-butadiene rubber are often used as binders for plastic explosives. For polymer-bonded explosives, various synthetic polymers are used.

In rocket fuels, polybutadiene acrylonitrile copolymer was used in 1960-70's big solid-fuel booster rocket fuels.

In composite materials, epoxy, polyester or phenolic resins are common. In reinforced carbon-carbon, plastic or pitch resin is used as a source of carbon released through pyrolysis. Transite used cement as a binder.

Organic binders, designed to disintegrate by heat during baking, are used in sintering.

In building construction, concrete uses cement binder, asphalt pavement uses bitumen binder.

See also glue, adhesive, thickening.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Binder material", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki