European automotive coolant technology will be influenced by “Europe 1992” which means free trade and free traffic. Methods to evaluate the demanded quality level of coolants are described. Different chemical approaches to that aim are discussed. Attention is payed to ecological and toxicological aspects. The paper closes with an outlook to further developments.
This paper will deal with European coolant technology and the expected influence of “Europe 1992” to this item.
Europe 1992 will mean free trade and free traffic between the countries of the European community (EC). EC includes 12 countries with 9 languages, about 320 million people on about 900.000 sguare miles, one quarter the size of the U.S. These 12 countries have a car population of about 130 million units, the car density varies from 6.6 people per car in Portugal to 2.2 people in Germany, as compared
with 1.3 people in the U.S. Total car production in the EC was 13 million as compared to 12.5 million in the U.S. and Canada and 12 million in Japan. Out of these 13 million EC-produced cars 6.3 million have been “exported”, mainly also inside the EC, to other parts of Western Europe and to North America.
The coolant demand for first fill and after market sales in Western Europe ia about 300.000 metric tons per year. Coolant quality is to a large extent influenced by the growing use of aluminium and its alloys in cooling systems, by high powered engines with low or medium displacement caused by the European taxation system and by high fuel prices.
Coolant quality demanded by the car industry is very high troughout the EC. The same is true for coolants marketed by oil companies. High quality products are also used by fleets of vehicles used in public services like mail, railways and the army. We do see, however, lower quality marketed by some blenders. Even if these cases are not too frequent, industry exerts much efforts to educate consumers to use high quality products and to eliminate those with lower quality.
The car industry has well organized the re-fill market in their repair shops. Warranty for the cooling system is only given when approved coolants have been used according to the maintenance or operators manuals.
