As you already know I am not a Chemist, but I am lucky enough to have at CONICA a team of colleagues that are some of the best ones, they are able to develop any product for flooring applications that you can request us.
A few days ago, the world celebrated the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, marking a key milestone for the modern environmental protection movement. I thought I should contribute with some ideas about how we, as a chemical company can innovate with environmentally sustainable new products.
As a disclaimer I have no idea of the projects under current development in our R&D team or the short term plans, as this is confidential information in all companies, but I am fairly sure becoming a greener company and reducing our carbon footprint are some of our continuous targets.
I believe we might have at sometime a family of Bio-based polyurethane products for flooring as an efficient and environment friendly product.
Polyurethane is a synthetic polymer discovered by Professor Otto Bayer in 1930. It’s a versatile material that’s been added to a lot of applications as moulding, foaming and adhesives.
As part of the increasing environmental concern by consumers worldwide a significant market portion is turning to environment-friendly, natural polyurethane alternatives.
Bio-based polyurethane (PU) products have been used from last few years and replaced petrochemical based products due to their lower environmental impact and biodegradability. Bio-derived material, such as vegetable oils, cashew nutshell liquid, terpene, Eucalyptus tar and other bio-renewable sources, are a source of precursors for the synthesis of polyols and isocyanates which are being considered within manufacturers to produce “greener” PU coatings.
There are probably several challenges to get a bio product that matches the performance that we are currently achieving with our current product portfolio for flooring applications. Among these challenges we may have odour, colour, consistent reactivity, UV stability and other performance and cost aspects.
One of the obvious challenges is the need to avoid products that are intended for human consumption or compete directly with food production. This eliminates many vegetable oil derivatives based on soybean, sunflower, olive, peanut, canola, and corn, among others.
Polyurethanes are obtained as the product of the reaction of an isocyanate with a polyol. Due to this composition as regards green chemistry, the fundamental approach to obtain bio-based polyurethanes has been to substitute the synthetic polyol with natural polyols. However, this approach still makes use of isocyanates. Avoiding isocyanates and using an alternative bio product and method may be also a quite big challenge.
Finally, the polyurethane obtained through this process should also have a range of open and curing times like those we currently have for our moisture-curing polyurethanes and should be able to avoid using solvents while keeping good mechanical properties and chemical resistance.
When you don’t know if something is impossible you have no fears to ask for it. My lack of knowledge on chemistry is maybe a great excuse to ask my colleagues for advanced green and more sustainable products and a lot of other weird things.
Take care
Rubberman Blog 