I never expected that China's heaters were selling well in Europe! What's going on when it becomes a hot commodity?
Since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the European energy crisis has become increasingly severe, fossil fuel supply is in short supply, prices soar, and the power market is almost out of control.
How can we safely survive the winter when natural gas supply is restricted and the price soars?
More and more Europeans are looking for answers to China's manufacturing.
Recently, Rainbow Group has quietly become popular because of the concept of "electric blanket". Not only is this old small home appliance company ushering in both production and sales, but the export volume of my country's air conditioners, electric water heaters, electric heaters and other categories to Europe has also shown a counter-trend growth trend.
Data from General Administration of Customs shows that in July this year alone, EU 27 imported 1.29 million Chinese electric blankets, an increase of nearly 150% month-on-month. The export of heaters to the EU has also extended the sales season by about a month. Many importers have added heater orders, bringing a round of "subsidy wave".
European consumers are preparing for stocking in the cold winter under the energy crisis, driving the export of Chinese heating "magic tools" such as electric heaters, baby heating, and electric blankets.
Not only that, energy storage equipment was also unexpectedly "inspired". For families using air conditioners, refrigerators, and various lighting, the battery life of energy storage power is not a problem for a month. Currently, foreign energy storage power supply orders are also increasing sharply.
Plastic is one of the main raw materials for small household appliances. The plastic materials used in recent hot electric heaters require heat resistance, especially style grids. Therefore, the main types of plastics selected are: flame retardant PP, heat-resistant ABS, flame retardant PBT/PET+GF, PET+GF, flame retardant PC, flame retardant PC/ABS.
The plastic varieties selected for hair dryer are PBT/PET+GF, PET+GF, flame retardant PC, flame retardant ABS, and flame retardant PP.
The components of air conditioner application plastic mainly include panels, air guide plates, , axial flow fan blades, electrical control boxes, external grilles, etc. Commonly used plastics mainly include ABS, AS, PP and PC/ABS.
The hot export of China's heating "artifact" will also drive the growth of demand for these plastics and may increase the price trend!
As autumn begins in the northern hemisphere, winter in Europe arrives early, and the price surges!
Is the coldest winter really coming?
Such a cold winter, it is very important for plastic manufacturers to improve the low temperature resistance of products and thoroughly say goodbye to complain.
As the saying goes, it is easy to change the country and nature is difficult to change. This is especially true for polymer materials. Microstructure determines macro performance. The low temperature resistance of TPE can be explained from the structure of TPE.
TPE is usually a modified elastomer based on SEBS, SBS substrate. has a butadiene rubber structure. The butadiene molecular chain has high flexibility and can perform relative movement (slip) of the molecular chain at -50~90℃. This relative movement is macroscopic manifested as the elasticity of TPE and TPR. When the temperature is below -50℃ (approximately), the activity of the molecular chain is restricted and relative slip cannot be performed, so that TPE and TPR will lose their elasticity. This temperature is the glass transition temperature Tg of TPE.
Let’s look at polyvinyl chloride PVC. Originally, the flexibility of ethylene molecules is still good ( polyethylene has excellent low temperature resistance), but after one hydrogen atom in ethylene molecule is replaced by chlorine atoms, the unit mass of chlorine atoms is much larger than that of hydrogen atoms, which greatly weakens the flexibility of the molecular chain, strengthens the polarity and crystallization tendency of the molecular chain, making polyvinyl chloride less resistant to low temperature than polyethylene (PVC is easily lost to elasticity and harden when the temperature is lower than -10~-5℃).
This is why in winter, why the PVC handle and why the PVC sealing strip are prone to hardening, thus losing elasticity. From a microscopic perspective, it is a problem of the flexibility of the molecular chain, which leads to a different glass transition temperature of the material.The better the material of molecular chain flexibility, the lower the glass transition temperature Tg, thus having better low temperature resistance.
