Applications And Challenges Of Supercritical Foaming Technology

With the development of the economy, the environmental problems are becoming more and more prominent. Realizing green chemistry is an urgent task today, which creates opportunities for the development of supercritical foam technology. At present, supercritical foam sheets are widely used. The blowing agents used in supercritical foaming technology are usually supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) and supercritical nitrogen (ScN2), and the use of both has no environmental burden. The technology could reduce the environmental impact of polymer foam production. Although supercritical foaming technology has been put into production in some fields, it has not been applied on a large scale. We have analyzed in detail the types of foaming agents currently used in supercritical foaming technology and their applications in various fields, and summarized the technology that has been carried out. technical improvements. However, we found that today's supercritical technology still needs to solve some additional challenges to achieve large-scale production.

Expanded thermoplastic polyurethane (ETPU) bead foaming process prepared by supercritical CO2 and compression molded to make foam sheets. The effect of the pore structure of foam beads on the properties of foam sheets was studied. Higher foaming pressure leads to an increase in the number of cells and therefore a decrease in the size of the cells, while increasing the foaming temperature at a fixed pressure reduces the viscosity, which leads to a decrease in the number of cells and an increase in the size of the cells, thus increasing the expansion rate of ETPU . Although the processing window in which the pore structure of ETPU beads can be maintained is very limited compared to steam box molding, ETPU beads can be compression molded to produce foam boards by controlling the compression pressure and temperature to obtain sintering of ETPU beads.

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