MAKING AND FINDING SOLUTIONS
ASSESSING CAPACITIES
A technician uses a micro-extruder to evaluate small quantities of experimental polymers. Arkema’s business revolves around “innovation platforms,” including photovoltaics and wind, renewables, energy efficiency and water management. In order to ensure that it meets its customers’ require- ments, Arkema maintains the knowledge and capability to formulate polymers in-house.
into the ways that industry develops its own requirements—or addresses govern- ment-mandated requirements. And the materials Arkema makes are just plain fascinating.
Probably the Arkema brand best known to the general public in the United States is Plexiglas. Another product, well- known to those in the coatings (e.g., paint), construction and building indus- tries, is Kynar, which is an exceptionally durable, first-of-its-kind polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) coating that’s been around for 50 years. In fact, the venera- ble, trademarked Kynar is so well-known in the building industry that it is often, although wholly inaccurately, used as a synonym for PVDF coatings in general.
80 Army AL&T Magazine July-September 2015
Plexiglas and Kynar are registered trade- marks of Arkema Inc.
For Dr. Ryan Dirkx, vice president of research and development (R&D) at Arkema Inc., Kynar and other PVDF coatings are the reason “you don’t ever see anybody out repainting a skyscraper. Tat’s because it’s once and done. Te metal is actually coated back in the fac- tory. Tey bend it into the shapes they need to build the skyscraper, and it’s never painted again.”
A veteran of more than 20 years at Arkema and its predecessor companies, Dirkx is responsible for R&D activ- ity in North America, management of the R&D Center in King of Prussia
and coordination with the global R&D activities of the parent company, Arkema, headquartered in Paris. He has directed global R&D organizations for several Arkema businesses, most recently, those within the Performance Polymers and PMMA (Altuglas) Divisions. (PMMA is poly(methyl methacrylate), more com- monly known as acrylic “glass.”) He is a past chair of the Industrial Research Institute and past co-chair of the Board on Chemical Sciences and Technology, part of the National Academies.
Dirkx earned a B.S. in ceramic engineer- ing from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and stud- ied materials science at Pennsylvania State University, where he bypassed an
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