London - A conference on improving the sustainability of the polyurethanes industry is being created by Crain Communications Ltd, publisher of Urethanes Technology International magazine and organisers of the global family of UTI conferences.
This event, presenting the latest developments in sustainable manufacture of raw materials for the polyurethanes industry, is running 7-8 May 2013 in Amsterdam.
The programme for the SusPolyUrethane 2013 Conference is being organised by David Reed, who has had long-term involvement in the polyurethanes sector. Papers will focus on the latest advances in three key areas:
• Processes leading to pure basic building blocks, for conversion into raw materials;
• Processes using plant or animal sources to make materials such as polyols with reliable characteristics; and
• Use of scrap from production systems to yield raw materials for further use within the PU sector.
Companies active in these three areas will present the current status of their technologies, highlighting the commercial opportunities now opening up as polyurethane producers seek to improve their environmental sustainability by moving to the wider use of raw materials from renewable resources.
The first group consists of biochemical technologies for direct manufacture of some basic chemical building blocks such as polyesters based on succinic acid, bio-sourced polyols including propanediol and butanediol, as well as the innovative technology for converting carbon dioxide to polyols, introduced by Bayer MaterialScience at the UTECH Europe 2012 event earlier this year.
Papers presented during the SusPolyUrethane 2013 conference will detail the latest developments in commercialisation of these technologies.
The second main technology group is the now well-established manufacture of polyols from natural, renewable resources such as corn, soya beans and lignin. In this area, recent work has focussed on measures to boost the amount of such polyols that can be used in formulations without affecting production efficiency or end-product performance.
Systems are now available which allow complete substitution of petrochemical-based polyols, as papers in this part of the conference will discuss.
The final segment covered will be the use of scrap products both from manufacturing processes and post-consumer waste. Machinery suppliers are able to supply complete packages for such processes allowing foam makers themselves to benefit directly from their own waste products, thus solving the problem of waste disposal and creating a benefit to their production economics.
A large amount of research is being carried out on production of the essential diisocyanates such as TDI (toluene diisocyanate) and MDI (methylene diphenyl diisocyanate) from more sustainable resources, a topic which will also be addressed at this important event.
For further details, see www.polyurethane-conferences.com or contact Jenny Noakes on +44 208 253 9643.
To be added to the list for further information, contact Jenny Noakes, [email protected]
