News
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Happy Holidays and a bright 2016
December 24, 2015
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Press items
October 27, 2015
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Nuon Solar Team wins World Solar Challenge 2015!
October 22, 2015
Chemical industry
The chemical industry is central to the modern world economy. It converts raw materials into thousands of different products, of which the fast majority is on a polymer basis. The industry includes manufacturers of inorganic- and organic-industrial chemicals, petrochemicals, polymers and rubbers (elastomers). An unappreciated property of many of these products is that they degrade under sunlight and other forms of weathering.
With Eternal Sun’s accurate solar simulation systems we ensure chemical companies to develop products with improved weather resistance. Our simulators provide a reliable and user friendly setup, which allows the R&D departments to effectively analyze and improve materials. To test in real-life degradation conditions, we supply a solar simulator integrated into a climate chamber. This allows customers to execute accelerated life or aging tests under normal and extreme conditions, including full sunlight or UV degradation.
A totally different application of artificial sunlight in the chemical industry is in photo-chemistry. Researchers develop materials such as membranes that convert liquids and gases with the aid of sunlight. With artificial photosynthesis it is possible to convert water and carbon dioxide to oxygen and methanol, which can be used as a bio fuel. With the Eternal Sun large area solar simulators researchers in photo-chemistry can test photo-active systems on large areas, accelerating their development.
The effects of weathering on a coated surface.
For the chemical industry, the main benefits of our products are:
- High accuracy sunlight simulation
better uniformity (<2%) and spectral match than traditional weatherometer systems. - Separate control
of UV-B, UV-A and visible sunlight, controlling acceleration factors. - Compact system & flexible orientation
optional integration with or suspension in climate chamber. - Long lamp lifetimes
1800 and 9000 hours, compared to 1000 hours of traditional Xenon light sources. - Low system life-cycle costs
compared to traditional Xenon weatherometers.
Contact us to find out how we can help you benefit from our tailored solar simulation systems.
Applications
Weathering of materials
AATCC TM169 Weather Resistance of Textiles: Xenon Lamp Exposure
ASTM G151 Standard Practice for Exposing Nonmetallic Materials in Accelerated Test Devices that Use Laboratory Light Sources
ASTM G155 Standard Practice for Operating Xenon Arc Light Apparatus for Exposure of Non-Metallic Materials
ASTM D6695 Standard Practice for Xenon-Arc Exposures of Paint and Related Coatings
ISO 1-1-4892 & ISO 1-2-4892 Plastics - Methods of exposure to laboratory light sources
ISO 105-B02, B04, B06, B10 Textiles - Tests for colour fastness - Part B02: Colour fastness to artificial light: Xenon arc fading lamp test
ISO 12040 Graphic technology - Prints and printing inks - Assessment of light fastness using filtered xenon arc light
Performance testing of photo-chemical systems and materials
• Testing of photo-active coatings and materials
• Testing of sunlight curing substances
Products
Large area solar simulator