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At airports, in tunnels, high-rise buildings, as well as in modern technologies such as electromobility or solar power plants — cable insulation developed in this international project called EnFiCab (Environmentally Responsible and Low Fire-hazard Polymer Composites for the Cable Insulations) will find its application in all these areas.

The environmentally friendly and fire-resistant cable insulations will be made from a polyethylene-based composite material. This material is designed to combine halogen-free flame retardants of natural origin, such as metal hydroxides and clay minerals, offering significantly higher fire resistance.

“The new material will eliminate halogen additives, which produce toxic emissions when burned, and will therefore be more environmentally friendly,” explained Radek Polanský, the project’s principal investigator from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering UWB.

A total of 389 project proposals were submitted to the M-ERA.NET Call 2024. Only 31 were approved, reflecting a success rate of 7.9 %. In the thematic area of High Performance Composites, which includes EnFiCab, 34 proposals were submitted, but only this single project was supported — with a success rate of just 2.9 %, the lowest across all categories in the call.

The project was officially launched on May 15 at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, where the project coordinator presented the administrative and financial framework, and partners introduced their technical contributions and roles.

The project is led by a team from the Department of Materials and Technology at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of West Bohemia. The development involves collaboration with the Polymer Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the Milan Vidmar Electric Power Research Institute from Slovenia. Funding is provided by the national grant agencies TA CR, SAS, and MVZI.