Hanwha Total Receives 'New Technology' Certification for Recyclable Polypropylene Power Cables

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] Hanwha Total's eco-friendly polypropylene (PP) for power cables has once again proven its competitiveness in developing high value-added synthetic resin products by receiving the New Excellent Technology (NET) certification from the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards.

Hanwha Total announced on the 16th that its "recyclable polypropylene for power cables" obtained the "2020 New Excellent Technology certification" from the Korea Agency for Technology and Standards.

The New Excellent Technology certification is a system that certifies outstanding technologies that are either newly developed domestically or have innovatively improved or enhanced existing technologies. Certified technologies and products receive benefits such as priority purchasing and mandatory purchasing by public institutions.

The eco-friendly polypropylene for power cables developed by Hanwha Total is a material used in the insulator, which is a core component of high-voltage power cables with a capacity of 22.9 kV (kilovolts) used in power distribution. It is a product successfully produced through Hanwha Total's proprietary polymerization process developed over four years.

While the insulating materials of existing high-voltage power cables were difficult to recycle once processed, Hanwha Total developed power cable insulating materials using polypropylene that is easy to recycle.

Until now, the industry considered polypropylene unsuitable for power cables because its typical characteristics?high stiffness and poor impact resistance?did not match the flexibility required for power cables. However, Hanwha Total's research team overcame these limitations by utilizing their proprietary polypropylene manufacturing technology and succeeded in commercializing a material suitable for power cable insulators.

In addition to being easy to recycle, Hanwha Total's eco-friendly polypropylene for power cables reduces energy consumption during manufacturing compared to existing products, lowering CO2 emissions, and enhances insulation performance, improving power transmission efficiency by approximately 10%.

Currently, the global market for insulating materials for wires and cables exceeds 700,000 tons annually, and as efforts to replace these with eco-friendly materials expand, Hanwha Total's eco-friendly polypropylene for power cables is expected to attract attention as a high value-added product leading the future market. Hanwha Total has been recognized for its excellent technological competitiveness in the high value-added materials sector, having produced a total of six world-class products to date.

Senior Researcher Lee Eun-woong, who was in charge of developing the eco-friendly polypropylene for power cables, said, "Breaking the conventional belief that polypropylene is difficult to use as an insulating material for power cables and succeeding in commercialization was a personally meaningful research project," adding, "Reflecting the trend of growing environmental interest more than ever, we plan to further focus on developing high value-added eco-friendly materials."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.