Polyurethane (PU) foam is a material that has long been regarded as a good thermal insulator for building purposes due to many advantageous attributes, such as cost and feasibility. Yet, to further develop its performance, many studies have focused on the potential of using the micro-structure of PU foam as an encapsulation for PCMs. Despite the apparent advantageous outcome of this premise, from the perspective of thermal performance, fire-retardancy issues may pose as a threat. PU foam is known for its inherent poor fire-retardation properties. With the addition of PCMs, especially waxbased, it is possible that the fire-retardancy would worsen. This would translate into additional costs in terms of application of treatments to counter the disadvantageous hazardous properties. In this study,an empirical investigation is carried out with the aim of determining whether addition PCMs to PU foam would influence its retardation, and to which extent.In this context, granules of wax-based PCMs are encapsulated in to closed-cell rigid PU foam via a simplified amalgamation method. Two concentrations of PCM content are presented in this paper. Then, fire-retardancy testing is performed on specimens to compare the performance of the created PU/PCM specimens with this of regular PU specimens. The outcome of this empirical investigationfurther confirms that addition of PCM to PU foam is disadvantageous in terms of fire-retardancy, and that the amount of added PCM is of considerable influence on this.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.