Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : The Silent Killer in PU Foam: Water Content

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

The Silent Killer in PU Foam: Water Content

We obsess over the Isocyanate Index, but there's another variable that's just as ruthless: the water content in your formulation.

If the water content changes by just 0.1%, it can throw your NCO Index off by a full point. This means your foam can either over-expand and crack, or not rise properly. The consequences are instant and severe:

*Too much water? Your foam will over-expand, leading to splits, shrinkage, and a weak, brittle structure.

*Too little water? You get poor rise, high density, and a loss of valuable physical properties.

I've seen entire batches scrapped because a drum of polyol absorbed moisture from the air in the warehouse. The culprit is often invisible until it's too late.

Industry Standards for Water Content:

Maintaining precise water content in raw materials is paramount. While specific limits can vary based on application and proprietary formulations, general industry guidelines and standards like ASTM D4672 provide a framework for quality control. Here are typical acceptable limits:

•Polyols: Generally, water content should be below 0.05% to 0.1%.

Polyester polyols generally are more prone to moisture issues than polyether polyols. Where polyether grades are often ≤ 0.05 % water under good handling, polyester types can drift toward 0.1-0.2 % due to their chemical structure (ester bonds). That makes moisture control and testing even more critical when using polyester polyols.

•Additives/Fillers: Water content is usually accepted up to 0.2%, though the focus is often on the overall filler content (e.g., up to 20 wt.% for certain fillers)

*Taming the Variable: Essential Control Measures

Precision in PU foam manufacturing extends beyond the major components; it demands rigorous control over subtle factors like water content. Implement these critical steps to safeguard your production:

1. Rigorous QC Testing:

Never assume. Utilize Karl Fischer titration—the industry-standard method—to test polyol and isocyanate moisture content upon receipt and immediately before use.

2 . Proper Storage:

Prevent moisture ingress by keeping all raw material containers tightly sealed. For bulk storage, employing nitrogen blankets is highly recommended to create an inert atmosphere and prevent moisture absorption.

3. Real-Time Adjustments:

Factor in ambient humidity and temperature when calculating your foam formulation, especially in environments with variable climates. Adjustments may be necessary to maintain the optimal NCO index.

***Water content is a silent partner in every polyurethane reaction. Ensure it's working for you, not against you, to achieve consistent quality and avoid costly production setbacks.

source : F Homayouni

#pufoam

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share : Waste turned into action

Today's KNOWLEDGE Share

Waste turned into action👇🏽

1 coconut at a time 🥥🌴

This is where 2 problems meet:

❌ Billions of coconut shells are burned every year.

❌ At the same time, millions of trees are cut down for wooden pallets.

Michiel Vos saw that and founded CocoPallet International B.V.

🧐 Turning waste into world-changing value.

🌍💡With a product that is circular and 100% bio-degradable.

Creating a circular business is not easy.

I know Michiel personally.

Here is how he transformed vision into real circular action:

1️⃣ Strong founder vision.

He saw an problem (and a market) where others saw waste. 🌱

2️⃣ Unstoppable drive.

He is a force of nature. Never letting technical or financial hurdles stop the mission. ⚙️

3️⃣ Cornerstone partnerships 🤝

The recent alliances and partnerships in Southeast Asia help to have muscle behind the vision - and drive impact at scale.

Love it!

♻️ Another of these breakthrough that helps to redefine packaging from the ground up?🌴

Credit: Ecomedy

source : Harald Friedl

A California Split on Plastics Legislation

The governor vetoes a bill that would ban forever chemicals in cookware while the state attorney general pursues "rogue" plastic bag producers.

What happens in California doesn’t stay in California. That’s one of the perks of being an economic powerhouse: The Golden State would be the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world, depending on which metrics you use, if it were a sovereign nation. That came to mind recently as a couple of events affecting the plastics industry hit the news: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto of a bill that would have phased out the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), aka “forever chemicals,” in cookware and food packaging and state Attorney General Rob Bonta filing a lawsuit against three companies for allegedly producing non-recyclable plastic bags and marketing them as recyclable.

Newsom kills bill because of cookware affordability concerns:

Newsom returned Senate bill 682 to the California Senate without his signature, effectively killing the bill. SB 682 would have prohibited the distribution or sale of food packaging containing intentionally added PFAS statewide starting Jan. 1, 2028. It also would have prohibited the distribution and sale in California of cookware with intentionally added PFAS after Jan. 1, 2030.

While Newsom said in the unsigned letter to the Senate that he shared the goal of protecting “human health and the environment by phasing out the use of PFAS in consumer products,” he expressed concern about the bill’s impact on the “availability of affordable options in cooking products.” He ended the letter with notes of encouragement for the bill’s author, Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), and stakeholders to “continue discussion in this space while ensuring that we are not sacrificing the ability of Californians to afford household products like cookware.

The bill had garnered national attention due to the cookware provisions specifically, with fierce resistance from industry stakeholders like the Cookware Sustainability Alliance and celebrity chefs like Rachael Ray voicing their opposition, noted the National Law Review in an article posted on Oct. 20. Various environmental advocacy groups also voiced their disapproval. Newsom, it should be noted, recently has taken much more moderate positions on a number of issues than in the past as he considers a run for president. While he maintains that he is not thinking about running, he did tell the Wall Street Journal that it was a “path I could see unfold.

State attorney general relentless in pursuit of perceived corporate malfeasance

Meanwhile, Attorney General Rob Bonta ended months of speculation that he might seek higher office and run for governor when he said earlier this year that he would run for a second term as attorney general. Unburdened by having to broaden his constituency, he has been relentless in pursuing what he considers to be corporate malfeasance, notably by filing a lawsuit against ExxonMobil last year for a “decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.

Earlier this month, on Oct. 17, Bonta announced the conclusion of a statewide investigation into plastic bag producers to determine if they were, indeed, supplying bags that are recyclable within the framework of the state’s infrastructure, as required by law. The announcement stated that he had reached a settlement with four plastic bag producers — Revolution Sustainable Solutions LLC, Metro Poly Corp., PreZero US Packaging LLC, and Advance Polybag Inc. At the same time, Bonta filed a lawsuit against Novolex Holdings LLC, Inteplast Group Corp., and Mettler Packaging LLC.

All seven manufacturers have provided billions of plastic bags used by California grocery retailers and have certified that these bags meet the recyclability requirements of Senate bill 270, according to Bonta. “However, despite the manufacturers' claims and widespread consumer belief, these plastic bags do not, in fact, appear to generally be recyclable, let alone ‘recyclable in the state,’ as SB 270 requires,” said Bonta.

As part of the settlement, “Revolution, Metro Poly, PreZero, and API have agreed to halt plastic bag sales in California and collectively pay $1,753,000, which includes $1,115,750 in civil penalties and $636,250 in attorneys’ fees and costs,” Bonta wrote in the announcement posted on his website. He said that he will seek monetary penalties, disgorgement, and injunctive relief in the lawsuit with the other three companies.

In addition to violating SB 270, Bonta alleges that the companies ran afoul of the Environmental Marketing Claims Act, False Advertising Law, and Unfair Competition Law.

California pioneers plastic bag bans

California was the first US state to ban single-use plastic bags in 2014. Since then, 11 more states have passed similar legislation, along with many counties and cities.

When SB 270 was first passed into law in California, it made an exception for thicker plastic carryout bags made from high-density polyethylene that were considered reusable and met certain recyclability standards. Presumably, some of the companies investigated by Bonta sought to leverage this loophole. In any event, a new law — SB 1073 — will ban all single-use plastic bags at supermarkets and other retail outlets starting on Jan. 1, 2026. Stores will only be allowed to sell reusable plastic bags made with recycled content or recycled paper bags.

source : Plastics Today

Plastics Europe sounds alarm on declining EU market, stalled circular progress

Plastics Europe used the release of its Plastics Fast Facts 2025 at the K show to issue a strong warning: Europe's plastics industry is in decline, and only swift action from the European Union can reverse course.

I stand before you representing an industry responsible for 90 percent of the polymer production in Europe a sector that is essential to Europe's competitiveness, supplying automotive, renewables, batteries, health care, packaging, the list goes on," said Virginia Janssens, managing director of Plastics Europe.

The group reported that Europe's global market share in plastics production has fallen from 22 percent in 2006 to just 12 percent in 2024. Circular plastics production is stagnating, stuck at 15 percent of total production.

Without intervention, Janssens warned, Europe risks becoming overly reliant on imports while losing industrial leadership to China and other parts of Asia. Supply chains in sectors like automotive and construction are particularly vulnerable.

"Without urgent action, Europe will lose a vital manufacturing asset, its strategic autonomy and its circular transition.

While fossil-based plastics still dominate globally, mechanically recycled plastics and those made from bio-based or carbon-captured feedstocks are gaining ground. Mechanical recycling rose 12.7 percent year over year, reaching 41 million metric tons, according to the report.

Global plastics production remains heavily weighted toward Asia, which holds 55 percent of market share, followed by North America at 16.4 percent. Europe lags behind and is seeing limited gains not from circular growth, but from reduced fossil-based output.

Plastics Europe also raised concerns about the economic health of the sector. The industry still employs 1.5 million workers across 50,650 companies in Europe, but 3,000 firms have closed since 2022, resulting in 35,000 lost jobs.

Policy priorities and action plan

Plastics Europe is calling on EU policymakers to take the following urgent steps:

• Tackle the energy cost crisis.

• Add chemicals and polymers to the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) compensation list.

• Reinvest ETS revenues into circular and net-zero innovation.

• Strengthen trade and import legislation, including third-party certification of imports to ensure environmental and labor standards.

• Guarantee the free flow of goods and raw materials within the internal market.

• Improve real-time monitoring of trade flows to combat unfair practices.

• Raise recycled-content targets and provide economic and fiscal incentives at both EU and member state levels.

Janssens stressed that plastics remain critical to European industry and innovation and that supporting local production is a matter of strategic importance.

source : Plastics News /Sustainable Plastics

Italy postpones plastic tax to 2027

The Italian government has postponed the implementation of the plastic tax to Jan. 1, 2027 from the previous July 1, 2026.

The decision was included in the government’s draft budget plan for 2026-2028 on Tuesday, which also postponed the introduction of a sugar tax on sweetened beverages to 2027.

Since plans for a plastic tax were introduced in Italy’s superbonus legislative decree in 2020, implementation has been postponed eight times. 

The law aims to reduce the production and consumption of plastic. It introduces a tax of €0.45 per kilo of non-recyclable plastic packaging (MACSI). Examples of products affected by the tax include bottles, carrier bags, #PEfoodcontainers, tetra pack containers, #EPSpackaging and #plasticcaps. #Disposable packaging produced from compostable bioplastics or recycled materials, as well as packaging of medical devices, pharmaceutical or medical packaging are exempt.

The law also stipulated high penalties for those that fail to pay the #plastictax. This penalty is between two and five times the unpaid tax – but at least 250€. Late payments are also sanctioned and incur an administrative fee of 25% of the tax owed, or at least 150€.

Rome’s new draft budget approved €18 billion in tax cuts over the next three years.

source: Sustainable Plastics

NCC highlights the importance of ceramic matrix composites for British defence

Strategic materials essential for aerospace and hypersonic systems. This is how the National Composite Centre (NCC) defines #ceramicmatrixcomposites (CMCs). The organisation stresses the urgency of developing national production capacity to secure the supply chain and strengthen the UK’s technological sovereignty.

According to the NCC, CMCs now occupy a central place in advanced defence technologies because they offer thermal and mechanical performance far superior to that of metal alloys or monolithic ceramics.

At hypersonic speeds, exceeding Mach 5, components are exposed to temperatures exceeding 1,500°C. Traditional ablative heat shields quickly reach their limits, while conventional ceramics often fail due to their fragility. CMCs, on the other hand, combine thermal stability, strength and durability, making them indispensable for the design of next-generation propulsion and thermal protection systems.

However, the market for these materials remains dominated by foreign suppliers subject to strict regulations. “That dependency creates a clear vulnerability in the UK defence supply chain and a real limit on our ability to innovate and deploy independently“, warns the NCC.

The foundations of sovereign capability:

To meet this strategic challenge, the NCC has invested in high-temperature processing equipment capable of producing large-scale, non-oxidised CMC components that can operate at temperatures of up to nearly 3,000°C.

Previously, in 2023, the organisation contributed to the HASTE-F project, developed in partnership with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), which aimed to perfect the manufacture of silicon carbide (SiC/SiC) composites, materials that are damage-tolerant, radiation-resistant and capable of operating at 1,600°C. Already considered suitable for fusion reactors, these composites could also transform the propulsion and protection of military systems. “#Siliconcarbidecomposites have the potential to enhance fusion by enabling reactors to operate at higher temperatures for improved thermal efficiency, greatly increasing the commercial viability of fusion energy production.

For defence, these advances mean accelerated access to critical materials, manufactured on British soil and incorporating national intellectual property.

source : NCC / Jeccomposites

Joint Research on Application of Antithrombogenic Thermoplastic Elastomer ‘ZELAS AMP’ to Medical Devices

#MitsubishiChemicalCorporation has initiated a collaborative research project (hereinafter referred to as “the Joint Research”) in partnership with Professor Masaru Tanaka of the Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu Univ. and Professor Shigeru Miyagawa of #OsakaUniversity Graduate school of medicine, Cardiovascular surgery (Suita City, Osaka Prefecture), focusing on application of our antithrombogenic thermoplastic elastomer ‘ZELAS™ AMP’ to medical devices. Through this Joint Research, MCC aims for market launch of ZELAS™ AMP in 2027 and its global expansion.

In medical devices such as cardiac #catheters and cardiopulmonary bypass circuits, anticoagulants have conventionally been coated onto the base resin to prevent blood coagulation and thrombus-related occlusion. However, since the cost of coating processes can only be justified for certain advanced medical devices, there is demand for materials that can provide #antithrombogenic properties at a lower cost.

 

MCC has accumulated advanced formulation and compounding technologies for the medical-grade compound resin ‘ZELAS™ AMP’ over many years and has expanded its global supply system for medical materials※. The key polymer in ZELAS™ AMP is an amphiphilic polymer that combines blood compatibility, derived from its hydrophilic structure, with substrate affinity, derived from its hydrophobic structure. By adding this key polymer of ZELAS™ AMP to resins used as base materials for #medicaldevices (such as polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane, and engineering plastics), antithrombogenic properties, low protein adsorption, and low bacterial adhesion can be imparted to the base material.

 

The Institute for Materials Chemistry and Engineering, Kyushu Univ. specializes in elucidating material structure and function from the atomic, molecular, and nanoscale to the macroscale, and has particular expertise in the surface design of medical devices. Osaka University Graduate school of medicine, Cardiovascular surgery is a world leader in research and development of advanced medical fields such as heart transplantation, assisted circulation, and regenerative medicine.

 

In this Joint Research, MCC will pursue the optimal addition and formulation design of ZELAS™ AMP key polymer for various resins used as base materials for medical devices. By developing ZELAS™ AMP in response to the needs of medical professionals, MCC aims to reduce the use of anticoagulants through antithrombogenic properties and eliminate the need for coating processes, thereby lowering risk and manufacturing cost for medical devices that come into direct contact with blood, such as cardiac catheters, cardiopulmonary bypass circuits, and dialysis and transfusion components.

 

source : Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation