Manufacturing Technology Insights

The increased rate of development in the electric vehicle (EV) market is driving advanced R&D in all areas of the elastomers and rubber industry.

The accelerating pace of developments in the market for electric vehicles (EVs) is driving technology developments among machinery makers, materials suppliers, and processors within the elastomers or rubber industry. The rapid pace of change adds pressure on automotive systems suppliers to find materials meeting new CTQs (critical technical qualifications) for EVs, ICE, and electrically powered vehicles.

Water or glycol is the most common cooling technology for batteries, and as it is not too aggressive, non-oil-resistant sealing materials such as EPDM or silicone rubber are. However, an increasing number of cooling systems in EVs use water or glycol and include oil for lubrication. For electric and hybrid vehicles, there is significant interest in specifying AEM as a gasket material for high-voltage connectors that are injection-moulded from non-halogenated flame retardant polymers and for critical components of EVs such as traction motors, batteries, and others.

Today, the battery is the current solution to switching between gasoline and electric power and can be replaced with a fuel cell powered by hydrogen in the coming days. In this domain, elastomer and rubber have a significant role to play to insulate the devices, such as battery boxes, which are insulated by a gasket, while fuel cells need high-precision gaskets to insulate the bipolar plates (BPP) in the stack devices.

REP machines can produce the gasket for both technologies, providing adaptability to offer solutions to inject elastomer or rubber material on metal support to insulate the battery box for small to huge applications like truck cells. For smaller uses, these electric machines help  to reduce the overall energy consumption to generate the stacks by 40 per cent compared to other machines.

For fuel cells, the challenge is the switch in manufacturing scale, from laboratory to mass factory. Here, REP has been working for many years to develop solutions to produce injected gaskets on bipolar plates. The fuel’s efficiency and stability are ensured by various components, and the bipolar plates represent 80 per cent of the fuel cell market. Therefore, the gasket between each cell is important in terms of safety.

Due to the adaptability of the design, these machines can implant all the components, including silicone, FKM, etc., and gasket material on the bipolar plates on a single or double face, within fully automated systems, offering a springboard for increased productivity, repeatability, and thereby production capacity. The injection moulding machine, cold runner blocks, and mould are delivered as turnkey solutions for the bipolar plating gaskets moulding, with precise thickness to ensure the final stack dimension without deviation of the total height.

The next step in the development of fuel cells is centred on power efficacy and cost reduction to produce the complete stack. Along with increased durability, these technologies will significantly increase production efficiency in this crucial domain due to better cooling and new materials for gaskets.