Microcrystalline Wax

About This Product

Microcrystalline wax is recovered from the heavier residual fractions of crude oil refining rather than from the distillate streams that yield paraffin. It carries CAS number 63231-60-7 and melts across a wide band, typically 60 to 93 degrees Celsius depending on grade. It is supplied as slabs or pastilles ranging from white to amber. Its behaviour comes directly from molecular shape. Paraffin is built from straight-chain alkanes that stack into large, regular plate crystals, producing a wax that is hard, glossy and brittle. Microcrystalline wax is built from branched isoparaffins and cyclic naphthenes of higher molecular weight, and those irregular shapes cannot pack into an ordered lattice. The crystals that form are very small, which is what the name records, and the resulting material is flexible, tough, tacky and binds far more oil than paraffin can. In practice this means it stops larger candles cracking, improves adhesion to glass and mould walls, retains fragrance and colour that would otherwise migrate, and raises the melting point of a blend. Grades are classified broadly as laminating, the softer tackier type, and hardening, the higher-melting type. It is used in candle blends as a flexibiliser and adhesion aid, in cosmetics and creams, adhesives and laminating, tyre and rubber compounding, corrosion protection and casting. Bio Green Wax supplies microcrystalline grades to specification on melting point, needle penetration, oil content, viscosity and colour.