Application of Polyvinyl Alcohol(PVA) for Polyvinyl Butyral (PVB)

PVB films are mainly used as glass interlayers. PVB laminated glass has excellent properties such as safety, heat preservation, noise control and UV isolation, and thus is widely used in architectural safety glass. High-end PVB films are used in automobile windshields, in military industry as bulletproof glass for aircraft, tanks, ships, etc., and can also be used in solar cells and solar receivers.

The main foreign PVB manufacturers are DuPont, Solutia, etc. At present, this technology has made a breakthrough in China. The polyvinyl alcohol enterprises represented by SINOPEC and WANWEI already have the corresponding product production capacity. The development of PVB in China is slow, so in the past the PVB film used in laminated glass mainly relied on imports. Now the total PVB resin production capacity in China is about 25,000 t/a, and the annual output is about 15,000 t.

Since the aging resistance time of PVB film (50 years) is double than that of EVA film (20 years), foreign solar photovoltaic cell encapsulation glass film has replaced EVA film by PVB film. In China, although the price of PVB film is higher than that of EVA film, due to its excellent aging resistance and the country's increasing support for the solar industry, downstream photovoltaic cell packaging glass has great potential for consumption of PVB film. In the next few years, with the rapid development of photovoltaic cells, automobiles and related manufacturing industries, the demand for PVB resin in the domestic market will show explosive growth, resulting in a substantial increase in the amount of PVA used in the PVB industry.