This conference is dedicated to blowing agents and process technology for
foamed plastics and rubber.
Demand for
foamed plastics in the US is forecast to grow 2.
Product designed for use in food-contact applications such as
foamed PE cap liners where azodicarbonamide is not permitted.
1) has shown that elastomeric alloys (EAs), a class of TPEs, may be
foamed with chemical blowing agents or with chlorofluorocarbon mechanical blowing agents.
Additionally,
foamed silicone elastomers can be obtained from the heat-cured and room-temperature-vulcanizing processes.
Additional Applications for Its Proprietary White
Foamed Glass
Other innovations included foam-core sandwich molding (the ICI process), which involved simultaneous coinjection of solid skins and a
foamed core.
Elastomers, and including conventionally vulcanized
foamed rubber, have found use in a variety of sealing applications.
Eurotech's Chief Scientist, Professor Oleg Figovsky, reports that
foamed HNIPU has similar properties as conventional polyurethane foam and has commenced testing to ensure the HNIPU foam meets industry standards.
And the Societe Pour l'Industrialisation Rationelle du Batiment (IRBA GP) in France pioneered extrusion of
foamed PVC profiles by the Celuka process, which cooled the surface in a calibrator to form a solid skin.
Despite early experiments with sodium bicarbonate--ordinary baking soda--the era of
foamed plastics had to await the results of German work on hydrazine-based rocket propellents during World War II.
Several layers are applied--solid or
foamed, reinforced or unreinforced--and cured in the open mold at ambient temperature.
Utilizing a Cannon shuttle table, 10 windows are being
foamed on one platen while an equal number of parts on a second platen are being unloaded and loaded up for the next batch.
In solid molded versions, thermal cycling led to cracking of the O-ring used to position the part, whereas the
foamed product proved crack resistant.
These early
foamed films are mature products now in relatively flat markets.
