Monitoring and Evalution of Exotherms as Trouble-Shooting Processes in Polyurethane Foam Manufacture

Monitoring and evalution of exotherms as temperature rises were investigated using various foam formulations from two types of polyols with variations in blow indices as volume of water added. It was observed that exotherms increase linearly with blow index. The results also showed that density variations are in inverse relationship with the exotherms, foam heights and compression sets. Furthermore, it was similarly observed that as the blow index increases, ΔT1 and ΔT2 increase for both conventional (CPO) and polymer (PPO) polyols far above the acceptable temperature range of 22-26ºC for foam manufacture with consequences on physical properties.