Agent of Change
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
This article showcases ecomate® as the blowing agent of choice when considering Environmental Mandates and pressure on the Manufacturing Industry to "go green." Featured in Appliance Design's April 2007 issue, author Richard Babyak (Appliance Design) along with Todd Keske (FSI) outlines how ecomate® is truly the Agent of Change.
As everyone knows, the Montreal Protocol created a sea of change in a number of industries, including air-conditioning, refrigeration, and foam insulation, as manufacturers in those segments had to scramble for alternatives to the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) being used for refrigerants and blowing agents.
Montreal also engendered two other effects. One, it permanently wedded those segments to new externalities. Companies must now weigh technology decisions in the context of how climatology and politics may interact to produce new regulations.
The second effect was to fracture consensus. In the old days, most companies used the same methods for the same applications. Today, companies head off into different directions with their alternative technologies, sometimes as a result of internal preferences, sometimes as a result of regional market imperatives.
Exhibit A for the splintering effect is blown polyurethane foam insulation, where most companies used CFC-11 in the pre-Montreal era. When that proved challenging to quickly replace, many shifted to HCFC-141b, which was approved as a temporarily acceptable, interim blowing agent.
Finding suitable alternatives for HCFC-141b was also challenging, and that research was further complicated by growing concerns over global warming, as evidenced by the Kyoto Protocol. In addition to the industry evaluating the ozone-depletion potential (ODP) of blowing agents, the industry began thinking about their global warming potential (GWP), particularly in certain regions, such as Europe, where hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are under increasing scrutiny.
As a result, companies pursued divergent paths as the HCFC-141b phase-out deadline (January 2005) drew near. Some commercial appliance manufacturers switched to another interim blowing agent, HCFC-22, which only buys some added time. HCFC-22 has a phase-out date of January 2010, but there is a strong possibility of that being moved up to January 2008.
For pour-in-place residential appliance applications, such as refrigerators, freezers, and water heaters, several possible alternatives were initially explored, including HFC-134a, HFC-245fa, hydrocarbons (isopentane, n-pentane, cyclopentane), and water (where the expansion gas is actually carbon dioxide generated by the reaction between water and isocyanate). A few years ago, a new candidate emerged based on methyl formate chemistry. The product is called ecomate® and is marketed by Foam Supplies, St. Louis. It is available by itself or blended into systems.
Among those options, Todd Keske, marketing manager at Foam Supplies, suggests that HFC-134a and water are not strong enough contenders to be considered in the debate. HFC-134 has a high GWP of 1,300 and exhibits a significantly rising concentration in the atmosphere due to its use as an alternative refrigerant. Those two factors are causing the chemical to come under increasing scrutiny by regulatory agencies. (As an example, the European Union has voted to phase out HFC-134a in automotive air-conditioning beginning with new model vehicles in 2011.)
Keske says water-blown systems, though improved of late, fall at the bottom of the list in terms of thermal efficiency and still finish last in adhesion-to-metal tests, which renders them impractical for most appliance applications.
