Wire and cable

Imerys supplies a wide range of minerals to enhance the insulation and mechanical properties of low to high voltage cables, semi-conductive cables and industrial cable sheathing.

Calcined kaolin is an excellent choice for low to medium voltage cables made from EPR, EPDM and EVA.

Calcined kaolin provides:

• Excellent insulation properties
• Low moisture absorption
• Very smooth surface finish
• Excellent dimensional control due to low die swell
• Very low permanent deformation - insulation layers maintain original thickness during cable production

We recommend:

PoleStar™ and Glomax™  for this application.

In medium to high voltage cables, made from EPR, EPDM, EVA, calcined clay provides:

• Excellent insulation properties
• Very smooth surface finish
• Excellent dimensional control due to low die swell

We recommend our Polarite™ range of silane-treated calcined clay range for good dielectric properties, moisture resistance and excellent insulating properties in medium to high voltage cables.

Conductive carbon blacks are ideally suited to semi-conductive compounds for medium and high voltage semi-conductive shielding, conductive jacketing and cable accessories.

Imerys Ensaco^® carbon blacks are high purity, easily dispersible, low moisture pick-up specialty conductive and extra-conductive carbon blacks that provide electrical conductivity at low loadings.

Many Elastomers are used for this application, the most important being PVC-Nitrile, EPR, Butyl, Polychloroprene, CPE, EVA and CSM.

Imerys offers a wide variety of fillers to provide the chemical physical properties required by this application in particular:

• Kaolin and calcined kaolin, talc, aluminum tri-hydrate, magnesium hydroxide, calcium carbonate.
• Fine sedimentary clays with modified basic pH are often used when a peroxide curing system is employed.

Sedimentary clays such as our Suprex™ and Hexafil™ are ideal for improving abrasion and tear resistance in mine heavy-duty cable jacket compounds.

Cables designed for permanent immersion need cable sheathing with very low moisture uptake.  We recommend our Polarite™ range for improving moisture uptake in submerged cables.

Flexible cables are submitted to a high number of bends and twists and need excellent compression set properties.  We recommend our Polestar™ range for this application.

Halogen free flame retardant cables require superior flame retardancy (FR), abrasion and oil resistance, whilst still having good electrical properties. We recommend combining high-brightness talc or kaolin in conjunction with Alumina Trihydrate (ATH) or Magnesium Hydroxide (MDH) for this application.

Using Imerys minerals in rubber compounds for cable sheath and conductor insulation is the most cost-effective way of meeting 2016 Euroclass legislation under the EU’s Construction Product Regulation (CPR).