Providing a cool solution to lower emissions with grades of Ryton® PPS

With the launch of new extrusion grades of Ryton® polyphenylene sulphide (PPS), we offer automotive manufacturers a new family of materials that provide significant weight savings in coolant line assemblies versus existing metal and rubber lines, along with a performance upgrade to polyamide alternatives.

Ryton® PPS injection molding grades are already well established in the automotive market, because they are thermally stable, exhibit excellent chemical resistance and provide exceptional dimensional stability due to extremely low levels of moisture absorption. Now, three new extrusion grades of Ryton® PPS — XE3500BL, XE4500BL and XE5500BL — are being introduced to provide advanced material solutions to powertrain fluid line assemblies.

No need to weight

Automotive manufacturers are working to improve the efficiency of powertrains, which results in higher operating temperatures. Coolant lines are the “plumbing” of the engine and supply water/glycol through the thermal management system to keep the engine at its optimum temperature. Engine downsizing has increased efficiency, but it has resulted in the thermal management system being increasingly complex and sophisticated, which has increased the technical demands on the cooling lines. Polyamide solutions can be considered but doubts exist over their ability to meet the thermal requirements of modern downsized, power-dense engines.

The new grades of Ryton® PPS not only provide a 50% weight savings versus incumbent metal and rubber lines, but they also eliminate the risk of leakage that exists in the complex legacy solutions due to the need to crimp metal and rubber materials combinations together.

Coolant line routing is the last part of engine design to be completed. Therefore, materials must offer design freedom to enable more complex and potentially more direct routing. New extrusion grades of Ryton® PPS meet this requirement due to their ability to be thermoformed into complex shapes.

Customer collaboration

By adding new extrusion equipment alongside the injection molding processing capabilities, we are supporting the introduction of new PPS grades. To speed application development and time to market, we provide OEM customers and their tier suppliers a dedicated fluid handling design laboratory offering all aspects of application development, from part design to prototype cooling line extrusion. It also offers post-extrusion thermoforming trials of pipes and tubing to help optimize space in the constrained engine bay.

“One of the advantages of this facility for our customers is that they don’t have to cut into their existing production time to do sampling,” says Wright. “Our customers appreciate this collaborative approach and are eager to use the facility when it opens in 2019.”

Right on path

The Ryton® PPS extrusion grades have already been adopted by German OEMs, but now Wright and his colleagues are striving to build their customer base in other areas of Europe as well as in North America and Asia. Beyond coolant line assemblies, Wright is targeting the replacement of metal and rubber combinations in other engine and powertrain fluid handling systems. According to Wright, the more complex the fluid handling line, the more instrumental Ryton® PPS can be in reducing weight as well as simplifying manufacturing and assembly costs.