e-Orange is the new black for E-Mobility

In order to avoid over­heating our planet all coun­tries aim to decrease signi­fic­antly their green­house gas emis­sions. A major contrib­utor to one of these gasses, CO2, is the auto­motive internal combus­tion engine. This is forcing the car industry to reduce its reli­ance on such engines by moving towards hybrid and battery elec­trical vehicles. Such a move presents its own set of prob­lems, however, one of which is the pres­ence of very high voltages, high enough to be dangerous to anyone working on these cars. The industry is mitig­ating this danger by clearly identi­fying the pres­ence of high voltage compon­ents, coloring them in easily visible orange.

Unfor­tu­nately, these compon­ents can reach very high temper­at­ures in the auto­motive envir­on­ment which, over a typical lifespan of 10 years of a battery elec­trical vehicle, can cause the orange color to fade.

Confronted with the problem of color reten­tion in poly­amides L. Brügge­mann GmbH and Co. KG, Heil­bronn have developed a solu­tion in cooper­a­tion with the colour specialist, GRAFE Advanced Poly­mers GmbH, Blanken­hain. Two new products, PA-Tekolen e-Orange TS for flame retardant and PA-Tekolen e-Orange HP for non-flame retardant poly­amides, allow the manu­fac­ture of orange poly­amides which retain their hazard warning effect over a vehicle’s life­time.

Bruegge­mann’s and Grafe’s R&D teams produced these addit­ives in the form of a master­batch which combines the high temper­ature stabil­ised orange colour together with stabil­ised polymer addit­ives PA6 or PA6.6 which performs for more than 1000 hours at 130°C. These new e-Orange products allow compounders to optimise further product perform­ance since the orange color and the mech­an­ical prop­er­ties are already ensured by the new additive when exposed to high temper­at­ures.

Through their joint cooper­a­tion Bruegge­mann and Grafe allow the market­place to focus on further innov­a­tions for e-mobility safe in the know­ledge that the “new black“ e-Orange is no longer an issue.

The collab­or­a­tion between the poly­amide additive specialist Brügge­mann and the paint specialist Grafe shows once again what can result from creating the missing link between two part­ners. This allows the industry to concen­trate on new innov­a­tions in e-mobility with the certainty that the new black: e-Orange can now be used in its entirety for the purpose for which it was developed: redu­cing danger and increasing the safety of all people who work on elec­tric motors.

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