Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The increasing market demand for flexible polyurethane foams (PUFs) is prompting the academic and industrial community to seek solutions for their end‐of‐life management. In this study, this issue is addressed by incorporating β‐amino ester (BAE) moieties into the foam structure. This addition results in flexible hybrid PU‐BAE foams that can be thermally reprocessed and chemically recycled, with cell sizes ranging from 780 to 990 µm and densities between 90 and 150 kg m −3 . These foams demonstrate thermomechanical reprocessability, yielding stable PU‐BAE elastomers, with glass transition temperature values ranging from 14 to 25 °C. Stress relaxation experiments reveal remarkably fast relaxation times for these hybrid elastomers (23 s at 160 °C). Furthermore, a systematic investigation of the chemical recyclability of these foams via glycosylation is conducted under mild conditions, achieving complete disintegration within 20 min at 65 °C. Finally, the chemically recycled product is converted into a foam again, achieving a closed loop foam‐to‐foam recycling process. These findings indicate that the integration of BAE into PUFs leads to an enhanced chemical recycling rate, providing a promising avenue for addressing end‐of‐life concerns in PUF‐applications.
Source: Advanced Functional Materials
Institution: Ghent University
Language: English
Subfield: Polymers and Plastics
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Magnetic resonance equipment for advanced material research: molecular characterisation of solid, soft, homogeneous and heterogeneous matter for the development of advanced functional materials and chemical catalysis, G2492948467, G434337789, G449221245, Training in VITRImers: high performance MAterials and Trainees for cutting-edge industrial applications, Training in VITRImers: high performance MAterials and Trainees for cutting-edge industrial applications, G7939529489
OpenAlex ID: W4402929171