National Harbor, Maryland - Two technical sessions on renewable content at the recent Center for the Polyurethanes 2009 Technical Conference (CPI) in National Harbor, Maryland, pointed to a dramatic expansion in applications for renewable content PU materials, the CPI said in a 7 Oct statement.
"The utilisation of polyols with renewable content from a growing array of sources continues to increase for a variety of polyurethane applications," emphasised Jack Dai of Cargill Bio-based Polyurethanes in one of the sessions. "Supply stability of renewable feedstock and performance are among the key drivers now as the industry continues to innovate," he added. Cargill presented a paper on its soya-based polyols for the production of renewable content visco-elastic memory foams during the technical sessions.
A joint paper by Jay Elastomers and Jayant Argo-Organics introducing new polyester-based elastomer formulations opened the morning technical session, followed by a paper from DuPont Tate & Lyle and ITWC introducing a renewable diol based on a corn-sugar fermentation process. Battelle Memorial Institute closed the morning session by describing a versatile approach for preparing biopolyols from many sources using 20 - 40 glycerine, a by-product of the biodiesel industry, the CPI statement said.
The afternoon session included papers from Troy Polymers on scrap flexible polyurethane foams made with soya polyols, DuPont describing a new family of polyether polyols manufactured in a sustainable process using derivatives from agricultural feedstocks and a series of bio-derived succinic acid technologies for PU applications from DNP Green Technologies.
Other highlights included high molecular weight castor oil-derived triols for PU applications from Vertellus Specialty Materials and new cardanol-based polyols from cashew-nut-shell liquid, from Italy-based Cimteclab Srl. (RD)
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