Latest product solutions critical to sustaining North American spray foam market’s double-digit growth
Better emission management benefits the environment, applicators, contractors and building occupants
Evonik offers the largest portfolio of specialty additives for sustainable polyurethane insulation foams
Evonik has reinforced its emission management leadership position in the polyurethanes industry with a new best-in-class spray foam emissions testing facility at its laboratories in Allentown, Pennsylvania. With its innovation focus on zero-emission and more environmentally preferred additive solutions, this latest milestone further demonstrates Evonik’s commitment to supporting the Spray Polyurethane Foam (SPF) industry to meet its sustainability targets and maintain growth.
As a green product with excellent thermo-insulation properties, buildings constructed with SPF using Evonik additives can significantly reduce energy consumption and lower the carbon footprint. With as much as 40 percent of a building’s energy loss due to air leaks in roofs and walls, in addition to its excellent thermal performance, SPF also helps to seal gaps preventing air leakage. As the American Chemistry Council’s Spray Foam Coalition states: up to 33 billion US dollars in energy costs could be saved each year, if the 113 million family homes in the United States each used SPF insulation. SPF is more effective than alternative insulation materials such as fiberglass or mineral wool, which has helped the polyurethane foam-based industry in North America experience double digit growth over recent years.
„Over the past two decades, Evonik has led the polyurethane industry with our extensive additives portfolio for low emissive spray foam applications, says Ralph Marquardt, Head of Evonik’s PU business. “These specialty offerings have enabled the introduction and efficient use of the next generation blowing agents with very low global warming potential.”
Emission testing has become much more sophisticated with stricter environmental and worker safety regulations. In addition to the environmental benefits of reduced greenhouse gases, low or zero emission products are now an industry requirement to reduce worker re-entry and building re-occupancy times after spraying. The new emissions testing facility will help Evonik’s customers to establish formal measurement and testing protocols to meet current environmental, and future emissions and American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) standards.
“These testing improvements coupled with our deep understanding of spray foam formulation ensures we continue to design the best, cleanest additives for HFO, low emissive and cold weather spray foam systems, said Christian Eilbracht, Head of PU Insulation at Evonik. “We support our customers to make better performing spray foams that achieve lower emissions, helping them to meet industry benchmarks like the Green guard Gold standard.”
A key feature of Evonik’s new testing facility is the cold chamber which enables extremely low temperature spray tests down to 0-degree F for cold weather adhesion testing. These harshest low temperature tests make it possible to mimic real world conditions during any time of the year, helping to speed up formulation development time and improve product performance.
As a leader in supporting each blowing agent transition, Evonik’s solutions for the latest HFO blowing agents have helped to significantly reduce the spray foam industry’s global warming footprint relative to the previous HFC blowing agents. These are typically used in polyurethane foam applications that require high insulation properties such as spray foam insulation, refrigerator/freezer insulation, and panel insulation for building structures.
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