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The development of self-shielded electron processors in the seventies,
suitable for unrestricted use in the industrial environment, has led to a
variety of new commercial processes/applications utilizing these efficient
sources of ionizing radiation. The growth of the industry in the past two
decades has followed a pattern of broadly diversified applications, rather
than the total domination of any particular process or industry. This
pattern is the result of end users applying the technology to achieve a
unique property advantage in the product - usually one that cannot be
achieved by conventional processes (such as with thermal or chemical
initiation). The consequence of this is an almost total absence of
published data on comparative process cost data due to the proprietary
attitudes of the end user.
A measure of the stage of. development of this industry can be seen
from the fact that of the over 250 units manufactured and delivered by our
company, some 40% of these are in actual production use while the remainder
are in pilot use (20%) or are laboratory units (40%). . Table 1 presents a
summary, some of which was originally published by Berejka on the size of
the industrial electron beam market. The relatively broad application of
this equipment for laboratory/R&D applications and expanded industrial use'
since that time (1987) has, added another 225 machines to the total of 460
originally, listed in his work.
The data in the table illustrates the fact that the first three
applications (shrink tubing and film, wire and cable, vulcanization of
rubber) dominate industrial use (over 50%) and reflect the relatively
passive nature of the chemistry involved. That is, if one is careful about
the free radical inhibiting additives in a polyolefin, or rubber, no
significant change in the base material is required before accomplishing
electron induced crosslinking with its resulting property enhancement. Of
course, sterilization is also a "passive" application, and its small numbers
are included in "service centers" and "other".
