Jump into the PVC car - Solvay Plastics

Des Markets produits, and Products des marchés
Jump into the
PVC car
Citroën
After losing speed during the 1990s, PVC is racing back into the car market. Its ideal performances in certain
applications and its very competitive cost make it an ideal material for motor vehicle manufacturers.
The car industry is a major market
for PVC, purchasing 50 Kt/year
of compounds in Europe 1 . An
average car contains 10-15 kg of PVC,
in a wide range of applications. Jump in
for a demonstration.
Open the door, sit inside and you can
easily spot the PVC, used mainly to
increase comfort and for decoration. Its
main use is for dashboards, but we also
fi nd it on doors, arm-rests, seats, sun
visors, gearstick covers and sometimes
in the protective carpets, in the form
of one or more layers of compact
PVC, foamed PVC or in combination
with polyurethane fi lms and/or coated
textiles.
PVC formulations can easily be adapted
to suit the requirements for each
application: a fi lm intended for a seat, for
example cannot be thermoformed into a
car dashboard. Climatic conditions in the
country where the vehicle is to be sold
are also taken into account, to enable
the PVC to withstand extremes of heat
or cold. “For those parts exposed to the
sun, especially dashboards and doors, care
is needed to avoid ‘fogging’. A few years
ago it was noticed that new PVC coverings
(Editor’s note: other plastics suffer the same
problem) tended to deposit an oily fi lm
on car windows as additives evaporated.
Today manufacturers have become very
strict on this point. So we have put in a
lot of work in R&D to remedy this”, points
out Françoise Brisse, R&D and Quality
Manager at Atlas innovations, a company
that produces these fi lms 2 .
“The colours are invariably neutral, in
particular grey. Right now we are seeing
a trend towards very matt fi nishes”, she
explains to Wave. “We take advantage
of the opportunities PVC offers to move
on from imitation leather to more technical
grain effects with other textures. For
example, the metallic look of the passenger
compartment of the Citroen C3 Pluriel.”
Other competing materials for these
applications are TPU (thermoplastic
polyurethane), TP (thermoplastic
polyolefi n) and leather for certain topof-the-range
vehicles.
Dashboards
PVC is popular for dashboards because
of its ease of processing in the “slush
moulding” process, which offers an
easy way of producing complex shapes.
The negative mould of the dashboard,
containing the fi nishing grain, is fi rst
heated to around 220° C. PVC powder
is then poured in. The powder melts and
the mould is turned in every direction
to ensure that the PVC reaches every
corner of the mould, before the surplus
is drained from the mould. This results
in a uniform layer of ca 1mm left on
the entire surface of the mould, which
The heavyweights
of weight
reduction
PVC can be used to imitate leather, but also to obtain other effects. The Lancia Thesis
dashboard is slush moulded in PVC by equipment manufacturer Visteon.
Visteon
Plastics are certainly a “heavy” argument
for making vehicles lighter and
reducing fuel consumption. Appearing
for the fi rst time in the 1960s,
today they make up about 20%
of a vehicle’s weight, i.e. generally
between 170 and 260 kg. The most
widely used polymers (elastomers,
thermoplastics, thermosetting resins
and composites) today are the polyolefi
ns PP and PE, polyurethanes
(PUR), PVC – up to 10 to 15 kg per
car – and acrylonitrile-butadienestyrene
(ABS) 4 .
8
1
SolVin estimate (not including car seats)
2
The main European companies that manufacture PVC foils for cars are Benecke-Kaliko (Germany), Vulcafl ex
(Italy), Sioen (Belgique), Mecaseat, Atlas innovations, Yeramex (France).
3
The 3 main European producers of compounds used in cars are ATO, Solvay and LVM.
4
Source: Étude prospective Plasturgie automobile pour le Nord-Pas de Calais, ADIT, 2003

Dashboards are one of the main applications
for PVC in cars today.
is heated for a few seconds to complete
the gelation. The mould is then cooled
and the new “skin” is removed, placed
on the dashboard (for example in PP).
A polyurethane foam is then injected
between the materials to bond them
together and make the dashboard
comfortable to the touch.
This technique has been in use since the
1980s, and is now so successful that it
is used to produce almost 80% of all
dashboards, with demand continuing
to increase 3 . “Carmakers like BMW and
Renault, scared away in recent years by
the bad environmental image propagated
by the anti-PVC lobbies, are coming back”,
according to Christian Popin, a specialist
in the automobile market at PVC
compound producer Benvic.
“We have a project for the end of 2005
for the new BMW X3 and X5 for the
US market and another in 2006 for the
European market.” A further example of
this return to favour is the fact that since
July 2004 Benoac (Benecke group) has
Did you know?
How much PVC is there in a car?
An Audi A8 has been calculated to
contain 15.3 kg, comprising 5.4 kg
of cable sheathing, 4 kg of fi lms and
moulded iparts, 0.9 kg of dashboard
covering and 5 kg of mastic sealant.
been supplying more than 2000 skins a
day for the dashboard of the new Ford
Focus. A record order worth 25 million
euros over 6 years. Luxury vehicles like
Jaguars and the Porsche Cayenne are
also fi tted with PVC skins.
In place of the slush technique,
less complex dashboards can
also be fi nished with simple
thermoformed PVC foil (for
cheaper cars) or lined with a
layer of PVC foam to obtain
a softer touch.
Comfortably
seated
Being a good seat
covering and having
the honour of welcoming
passengers’
Faurecia
posteriors is a tall
order. The PVC must
be easy to sew, supple to resist threading
on the seat, not create folds nor crack
under the passengers’ weight, be resistant
to abrasion, stains and also cleaning.
This is also where PVC comes into its
own, allowing many fi nishing effects.
Cable sheathing
Other PVC applications in cars are
much less visible, indeed many of them
you would never suspect existed.
One of the main applications is for
sheathing low voltage electrical cables.
Here PVC offers major advantages: good
fi re and low temperature
resistance, easy processing,
low cost, and the possibility
of recycling by the
Vinyloop ® process. Here
too, after diffi cult times
between 1995-2000,
when manufacturers
turned towards PE or
PP, PVC is back in the
race. All the more so
since, whilst PVC has
traditionally been used
for classes 1 (passenger
compartments) and
2 applications, PVC
compounds now meet
category 3 requirements.
“To be accepted in this category,
the cable has to pass testing in
what are extreme conditions for PVC:
being kept at 150°C for 10 days and then
being spooled at -40°C without cracking”,
Christian Popin explains.
Under the bonnet, PVC, which also
offers good abrasion resistance, is used
as protection or a retractable sleeve to
strengthen the durits (tubes used to
Citroën
PSA
Audi
Apart from its use for door coverings, PVC can
be expanded with blowing agents, which act
like baking soda in a cake, into foam fi lling for
doors and sun visors.
Here PVC foam under the
microscope.
9

Markets and Products
PSA
PVC is applied during bodywork
assembly onto parts at risk from
stone chipping, to stop the paint
from fl aking and the bodywork
from rusting.
carry liquids between the different parts
of the engine).
Body armour
PVC is also used in another application
which, being invisible, is unknown to your
average driver. As “mastic” it is applied
to the sensitive parts of the bodywork,
for example to the welds of the engine
compartment, where it protects against
oxidation; under the body to make the
passenger compartment damp, dust
and fume-proof, and to parts at risk
from stone chipping. Plastisol, a mixture
of PVC and plasticisers, is pulverised
onto the bodywork before the fi rst
coat of paint. The two layers are then
stoved simultaneously. “At least 90% of
manufacturing sites use PVC mastic, which
is cheaper than polyurethane mastic and
more effective than bitumen”, Hermann
Eichholz from SolVin Customer Technical
Services PVC Emulsion told Wave.
Sealing
We fi nish this guided tour with a few
more applications. The joints of the fi xed
windows and the back window also use
PVC, in particular in North America (18
to 20 kt/year) and Japan. Using the socalled
encapsulation technique, perfect
waterproofi ng is obtained by injecting
PVC into a mould which represents
exactly the space between the glass and
the car wall.
Whilst the PVC protective strips along
the sides of car bodies have in most
cases been replaced by PP, the roof
profi les (the fi ne black or coloured strip
running above the doors) in many cases
remain in PVC.
Finally, PVC can also be used for the
roofs and side and rear windows of
convertibles and cross-country vehicles.
After some rough driving in the
1990s, it looks like a straight road
ahead for PVC.
■
Intermodal
transport
award for
SolVin Italia
SolVin has just won the 5 th
Intermodal Award of the European
Intermodal Association for its
SIRIO (SolVin Italia Railway
Intermodal Operations) rail-road
transportation system. SolVin PVC
for Italy is brought in by train to
two depots near Milan, and then
forwarded on to customers by
road. As well as putting SolVin Italia
ahead of the competition in terms
of logistics excellence (punctuality
and lack of contamination), this
system also brings environment
benefi ts, cutting out 10,000 trans-
Alpine truck journeys and saving
2.4 million litres of diesel every
year.
10
Daimler Chrysler
The Chrysler Sebring Convertible 2005, which is proving a great success in the United
States, has an electrically controlled PVC hood incorporating the roof, side and rear
windows.
On 2 November 2004, the
European Intermodal Association
(E.I.A.) handed the Intermodal
Award to SolVin Italia’s Managing
Director Paolo Groppi. The EIA,
which is supported by the European
Commission and Parliament, seeks to
promote intermodal transport and to
develop best practice in this fi eld.