Flexible polyurethane foams synthesized employing recovered polyols from glycolysis: Physical and structural properties

Polyurethane (PU) is one of the most important polymers with a global production of 17.565 million tons, which makes its recycling an urgent task. Besides, the main goal of PU recycling is to recover constituent polyol as a valuable raw material that allows to obtain new PU with suitable properties....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Simón Herrero, Diego, Lucas Martínez, Antonio de, Rodríguez Romero, Juan Francisco, Borreguero Simón, Ana María
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2017
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/29976
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10578/29976
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Polyurethanes
Recycling
Foam
Properties and characterization
Poliuretanos
Reciclaje
Espuma
Propiedades y caracterización
Descripción
Sumario:Polyurethane (PU) is one of the most important polymers with a global production of 17.565 million tons, which makes its recycling an urgent task. Besides, the main goal of PU recycling is to recover constituent polyol as a valuable raw material that allows to obtain new PU with suitable properties. Split-phase glycolysis can be considered the most interesting PU recycling process since provides high-quality recovered products in terms of polyol purity. The aim of this work was to evaluate several recovered polyols as replacement of the raw flexible polyether polyol in the synthesis of new flexible PU foams. These recovered polyols come from the split-phase glycolysis of different types of PU foams and employing as cleavage agents diethylene glycol or crude glycerol (biodiesel byproduct). The influence of the foam waste type and of the cleavage agent on the foams properties was analyzed. The recovered polyols were evaluated by performing several foaming tests according to the method of free expansion foaming of conventional flexible foam. Synthesized flexible foams containing different proportions of recovered polyols were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy, density and tensile properties; obtaining similar and sometimes even better values compared to the foams manufactured from commercial polyols.