In-situ thermal aging of biobased and conventional rigid polyurethane foams nanostructured with bacterial nanocellulose

TOMÁS JOAQUÍN DIAZ; CERRUTTI, PATRICIA; CHIACCHIARELLI LEONEL MATIAS

Journal of Applied Polymer Science

John Wiley and Sons Inc

Año: 2022 vol. 139

The incorporation of nanofillers and the use of biobased polyols might have a deleterious effect on the aging performance of rigid polyurethane foams (RPUFs) applied in the insulation and marine industries. To study this, RPUFs obtained from petroleum based (RPUF) and castor oil (RPUFRIC) polyols were nanostructured with bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) up to 0.3 wt%. Water immersion experiments revealed that the normalized water absorption (NWA) at the steady state was not affected by lower BNC contents (0.2 wt%) caused a decrease of up to 13.69%. The previous results reinforce the hypothesis that the incorporation of BNC in both conventional and biobased polyurethane systems do not cause significant changes on the aging performance of the resulting foams, provided that low BNC concentrations are employed.