Performance of INSTEP Polymer Enhancer for CPE Validated at China Industrial Cable Companies

As part of the Dow Wire & Cable INSTEP™ Polymer Enhancer portfolio, a new product, CPE 100 NT EXP1, has been developed for industrial cable jacketing applications. Driven by a speed-based approach using modeling to guide curing efficiency, INSTEP CPE Enhancer has demonstrated a significant productivity increase in line rates of 50 to 80 percent.

Currently, this market utilizes peroxide-crosslinked compounds based on chlorinated polyethylene (CPE). As one of the UL-listed crosslinkable jacket compounds, CPE boasts a unique combination of temperature resistance, flexibility and ease of processing.

Therefore, CPE becomes one of the important rubber-type jacketing materials in the wire and cable industry. With a target of increasing output for the customer, the modeling approach has focused on predicting line rate improvement based on a combination of lab data and the customer's process parameters. Trial runs at selected customers with conventional CPE jacketing compound demonstrated a significant productivity increase in line rate of 50 to 80 percent, with an added 2 percent of INSTEP CPE Enhancer. The INSTEP-modified compounds processed well at the increased line speeds without evidence of scorch. Quality control results of the cable samples indicated that the cure targets were successfully met at elevated line rates (1.5X and 1.8X) for the cable constructions under evaluation.


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