POLYURETHANE FOAMS OBTAINED FROM CASTOR OIL BASED POLYOL AND FILLED WITH WOOD FLOUR

M. A. MOSIEWICKI; G. DELL´ ARCIPRETE; M. I. ARANGUEN; N. E. MARCOVICH

JOURNAL OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS

Sage

Año: 2009 vol. 43 p. 3057 - 3072

0021-9983

A natural polyol was obtained from castor oil by alcoholysis with triethanolamine. The oil and the oil based polyol were characterized by analytical determination of functional groups and infrared spectroscopy, both indicating that the hydroxyl content increased significantly after the alcoholysis reaction.  The modified oil was subsequently used as the polyol component in the formulation of rigid polyurethane foams. Wood flour was chosen to be incorporated as filler in these materials. Physical, thermal and mechanical properties of the neat and reinforced foams were measured, analyzed and compared with a reference commercial system. The chemical reaction between wood flour and isocyanate strongly affects the thermo-gravimetric behavior. Compression modulus and yield strength decrease as wood flour content increases. The effect of the foam density on the compression properties was also investigated.