LS

■ Polypropylene insulating material can reduce greenhouse gases and be recycled

■ LS Cable & System is 2^nd in the world to develop it, and accelerates commercialization after completing a pilot project with KEPCO


LS C&S announced on March 31st (President & CEO, Roe-hyun Myung) that the company had recently completed the environment friendly cable pilot project with KEPCO and would actively start commercializing it.
 
The company used polypropylene (PP) as the insulating material to cover the conductors of cables instead of XLPE (cross-linked polyethylene) to reduce greenhouse gases and made it possible to recycle it.
 
XLPE has been used as an insulating material for more than 50 years since the 1960’s, but methane gas was generated and it could not be recycled.
 
The PP is a cable that made up for these weaknesses and the company has decided to use PP, a plastic used for chairs and water bottles to make a cable that does not generate any methane gas and reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Also, if the cable is ever scrapped, the PP, which was used as an insulating material, can be recycled into a variety of plastic products.
 
The new cable offers an additional benefit in that its functional efficiency is also higher. As PP is robust against heat, it can transmit power by at least 10% more than XLPE cable. For that reason, the new PP cable is expected to be used first in areas where power overloading is common such as town centers and major boulevards.
 
LS C&S invested about KRW 6 billion jointly with KEPCO to develop PP cables in 2015 for the second time in the world, and successfully completed pilot operations in Seoul, Busan and Daegu from 2017 to 2019.
 

“As countries around the world are trying to reduce greenhouse gases, the use of environment-friendly cables is expected to increase as well,” said President & CEO, Roe-hyun Myung of LS C&S. “We will capitalize on our domestic operating experience to expand the global market in cooperation with KEPCO.”


Photograph: The PP cable developed by LS C&S