Over seventy years experience with carbon blacks

However, their use can be traced back to early civilizations in China and Egypt, which were aware of the benefits of soot, which they used as an additive for inks and colorants. Mass production of carbon blacks to meet precisely defined specifications started in the first half of the twentieth century when the tire industry started to grow.

Industrial development of these products started in 1932 when Degussa, one of the company's from which Evonik was later formed, acquired a majority stake in the carbon black producer August Wegelin AG in Kalscheuren (near Cologne, Germany). Today, the Kalscheuren site is Europe’s largest producer of carbon black.

There are essentially four production methods: the lamp black process, the thermal black process, the Degussa black process and the furnace black method. Each of these methods produces a wide range of different carbon blacks which differ in terms of particle size, surface, structure, and interfacial chemistry.