Abstract
A cellular plastic with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) introduced dur ing manufacture, is an effective thermal insulator CFCs not only help produce small and uniform cell size but, because of their high thermal resistivity (thermal resistance per unit thickness), are also responsible for the superior insulating properties of the foam product
Development of today's technology took many years Now, in the advent of the Montreal Protocol enforcing development of alternative blowing agents, there are many questions to be answered. How can we change the methods of evaluation and the materials at the same time, without losing the experience of CFC blown prod ucts ? Can we predict 25 years of infield performance, particularly thermal perfor mance, from for example, six month laboratory testing? There are many conflicting priorities and expectations in the area of research on new products One needs a yardstick to measure the performance of the products and a basis to relate to one's own product development. Therefore cooperative programs between Industry and Government Research Laboratories is a superior way of quickly and thoroughly eval uating new products
One of the SPI(Canada)/NRC-IRC research projects deals with the evaluation of sprayed polyurethane foam systems. This project creates a knowledge base using available 1988 technology to which subsequent research and development can be related, either in terms of proprietary research or methods for material evaluation. This project includes the use of CFC and two alternate HCFC blowing agents em ployed in basically the same spray system, manufactured either without water or with a partial replacement of the blowing agent by water.
First, the properties of these polyurethane spray foams will be directly compared, then the formulation may be modified to maintain the process parameters This proj ect also includes some elements of research on application parameters
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