Is PVC a good material？

August 18, 2021

PVC is a polymer of vinyl chloride. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a synthetic material with many advantages and is an ideal material for engineering plastics. It features with good chemical stability, resistant to acid, alkali, moisture resistant, aging resistant, and flame retardant. The temperature cannot exceed 60°C during use, and it will become hard at low temperatures. It has excellent plasticity and a cheap price, so it is widely used and can only heat up to 81℃. It is easy to produce bad substances at high temperatures or burned, and it is rarely used for food packaging, due to it is difficult to clean and remain, can not recyclable. (Read more about TPE and NBR)

Hard vs. soft PVC

PVC can be divided into soft PVC and hard PVC. In general, hard PVC accounts for about 2/3 of the market, and soft PVC accounts for 1/3.

Soft PVC is generally used for floors, ceilings and the surface of leather, but because of soft PVC contains softener (this is also the difference between soft PVC and hard PVC), it is easy to become brittle and difficult to store, so its scope of use is limited.

Hard or rigid PVC does not contain softener, so it is flexible, easy to form, not brittle, non-toxic and pollution-free, and has a long storage time, so it has great development and application value.

The essence of PVC is a kind of vacuum blister film, which is used for the surface packaging of various panels, so it is also called decorative film, adhesive film, and is used in many industries such as building materials, packaging, and medicine. Among them, the building materials industry accounts for the largest proportion at 60%, followed by the packaging industry, and there are several other small-scale applications.

Pros and cons of PVC material

Pros

Rigid or hard PVC is one of the most widely used plastic materials. PVC material is a non-crystalline material. In actual use, PVC materials often add stabilizers, lubricants, auxiliary processing agents, pigments, impact resistance agents and other additives. These additives are mostly toxic, and it is the source that toxic substances come from, the raw PVC material is rarely poisonous. PVC material has non-flammability, high strength, weather resistance and excellent geometric stability. PVC has strong resistance to oxidants, reducing agents and strong acids. However, it can be corroded by concentrated oxidizing acids such as concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid.

Cons

The flow of PVC are quite poor, and its process range is narrow. Especially the high molecular PVC material is more difficult to process (this kind of material usually needs to add lubricant to improve the flow characteristics), so the PVC material with small molecular is usually used. And the shrinkage rate of PVC is quite low.

Generally speaking, PVC is a commonly used plastic. It is a resin composed of polyvinyl chloride resin, plasticizer and antioxidant, and it is not toxic itself. However, the main auxiliary materials such as plasticizers and antioxidants are toxic. Under normal circumstances, toxic gas will be released during high temperature or burning, that is what we need to be avoid.

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