From wings to walls: EU funded project turns on a new era in heating

© Georges Blond – fotolia.com

Imagine wind turbine or aircraft wings that de-ice themselves in extreme conditions or floors and walls with invisible, built-in heating. Or even clothes that warm you up on the coldest of days.

This is the vision of French manufacturer STILZ Chimie, a subsidiary of independent materials research company RESCOLL. Backed by the EU as part of its programme to support innovation in SMEs, the team at STILZ Chimie, led by Magali Clavé-Henry and her colleagues, is working on new heating systems based on special polymers.

These special polymers conduct electricity so that when a voltage is applied, heat is generated. The unique advantage of these polymers is that they can be incorporated into paints or resins and made into ultra-flexible thin films. These flexible heating materials can be combined into all sorts of materials and products – from floor and wall construction materials to the blades of wind turbines or aircraft.

Magali Clavé-Henry explains how, with support from the EU, RESCOLL is moving its conductive polymer technology from the lab into industrial-scale production at STILZ Chimie.

What do you hope to achieve with the project?

We have developed a conductive polymer technology we call PANIPLAST. Our technology is about how to synthesize these conductive polymers and achieve the right conductivity level.

The technology of synthesizing these polymers is quite mature now, but we have improved it so that we can make 100% organic polymers, which are highly conductive, have better stability and flexibility, and are safe to use.

We can disperse the polymers in different matrices like resins, paints, inks, or plastics to make these materials conductive. In turn, these conductive materials can find use in a wide range of applications where lightweight conductivity is desirable.

Our current project is looking into the markets we can target, prioritising the most promising and identifying what resources would be needed to go into production at STILZ Chimie.

What issues do you hope to tackle with this technology?

To read the complete article: http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?&artid=43157

For more information about our products: paniplast@rescoll.fr

Chauffage • dégivrage • Instrument PME • polymères conducteurs • rescoll