Chemical Engineering August 2021 - 15

PP, elastomers and reinforcements]
in automobiles has expanded greatly
over the past 25 years, but further
expansion into new applications, including
those in BEVs, has required
more innovation, " Jablonka remarks.
Of the 25 products in Dow's Engage
portfolio of TPO impact modifiers,
Engage 11000 is the newest.
Dow recently introduced the 11000
series of its Engage polymer product
portfolio as a way to expand
the usage space for PP and TPO in
automotive applications. Engage is
an ethylene-octene copolymer produced
using Dow's single-site catalyst
technology that is blended with
PP and reinforcement materials. The
concept behind the Engage 11000
series development was to arrange
the co-monomers on the polymer
chain in a specialized way to decrease
the glass-transition temperature
of the polymer, Jablonka explains.
" The objective is to move the
glass transition temperature lower to
improve low temperature toughness
while moving the melting temperature
outside the normal operating
range of the material to reduce thermal
expansion, " he says.
PP has a relatively large coefficient
of linear thermal expansion (CLTE),
so to be used for automotive parts
with acceptable design appeal, such
as body panels, it needs to be modified
to minimize CLTE so that the
small gaps between the panels, can
be small, for example. Lower CLTE
also avoids fatigue issues and cracking
when TPOs are welded to other
lower CLTE materials.
Another advantage of the Engage
11000 series is the superior melt
flow properties it enables during
processing due to its high impact
efficiency, Jablonka says, which allows
more complex geometries in
the components to be made from
it. The material has been launched
commercially and is currently being
incorporated into BEV and ICE vehicles.
" Expanding the usage space of
TPOs for lightweighting means there
will be continued demand growth for
plastics in vehicles, " Jablonka says.
According to Dow's Jablonka,
among the goals is more efficient
impact modifiers with resins that
flow well for processing, and have
low-temperature toughness without
embrittlement. Other plastics
have potentially poor melt flow, but
TPO can be used for more applications.
" There's going to be continued
growth in plastics due to lightweighting
expanding usage space of the
PP and TPO, " Jablonka says.
Safety and flame retardance
The growing electrification of vehicles
has made vehicle safety a particular
concern, especially with the
potential for battery fires and thermal
runaway, many experts agree (Figure
2). " Vehicle safety can be particularly
important when you look at the need
to protect the battery system during
a crash, including side impacts, "
SABIC's Parikh says.
" The possibility of battery fires
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Chemical Engineering August 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering August 2021
