Plastic Film is pleased to announce the formal introduction of our line of Kynar® film Sampling Bags. The development of this film began when the automotive industry realized that the present film specified in the Federal Register namely Tedlar® could no longer meet the future requirements of the emission testing labs due to “DMAC”.
DMAC is part of the Tedlar® manufacturing process and remains in the film outgasing hydrocarbons thereby increasing the possibility of failing a vehicle test. The introduction of the new LEV and ULEV vehicles would require films with levels of contamination in the parts per billion and not parts per million as the present films.
The automobile industry through AIGER (Automotive Industry/Government Emissions Research), a cooperative research and development agreement met monthly to discuss current problems and possible solutions. A contract was issued to Southwest Research Institute to undertake the project of collecting and testing all possible known films to find the film to replace Tedlar®. Plastic film was asked by AIGER to supply many of the films including Kynar® and supply their advanced Kynar® fittings for all the testing being performed. When the final results were in, Kynar® was the unanimous choice.
Using the published results, General Motors undertook its own development program using sampling bags made of PFE supplied Kynar® with PFE proprietary Kynar® fittings. The results of these undertakings were reported in a technical paper presented at the 2002 SAE conference. Copies of this presentation can be obtained from the SAE – technical paper 2002-01-0051, 2002. Also, Mr. Jim Hill of General Motors wrote a report for the AIGER group on conditioning the sampling bags to achieve background levels to 15 parts per billion or less. Presently PFE supplies these Kynar® bags to General Motors with production background levels of 45-65 parts per billion, prior to conditioning by General Motors.
PFE is offering this new Kynar® film in two thicknesses, 3 mil for ambient emission sampling and 4 mil for automotive emission sampling. The 3 mil will be offered at prices compared to the present Tedlar® while 4 mil for more stringent applications will be preconditioned with special bakes and special handling, thereby obtaining background levels between 45-65 parts per billion.