A novel strategy has been established, in the laboratory scale, for the generation of the popular thermosetting resin phenol formaldehyde (PF; resole), through a continuous process using a tubular reactor, which is usually developed in the commercial scale through a batch process. A refractive index technique is employed to evaluate the optimum residence time within the tubular reactor to obtain a commercial grade equivalent of PF resin. The unreacted free formaldehyde level has been found to be very low in the resole resin prepared by using the new route. The initial characterization of the resin has been done through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and gel permeation chromatography. The cure characteristics of the resin have been analyzed through differential scanning calorimetry. The degradation features of the cured resole are investigated using a thermo gravimetric analyzer and the fractured surfaces are analyzed through scanning electron microscopy. It has been confirmed that the adverse effects of a batch reactor process can be significantly reduced by adopting a continuous resin manufacturing process for PF resin which can be successfully extended to commercialization after optimization.
A model has been proposed to determine the formaldehyde (F) to phenol (P) ratio [F/P] of resole with the help of Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy. The study is based on the comparison of IR absorbance of the dominant peaks corresponding to the formaldehyde and phenol contents in the resin. This study can be of much use in adhesive coating industries to employ the F/P ratio as a quality tool as well as for competition resin benchmarking. It can also be utilized for understanding the kinetics of the reactions between phenol and formaldehyde. Detailed qualitative analyses of various resoles with different formulations have been discussed in this paper, which can be of potential help for the standard analysis of the commercial resins. The validation of results confirms that the most fitting model offers an error less than 7%. Interestingly, this model can also be applied with blends of different Phenol formaldehyde resoles.
This work reports the fabrication of an antibacterial phenol formaldehyde (PF)/silver (Ag) nanocomposite coated polyester fabric material for industrial coating applications. Spherical Ag nanoparticles (NPs), with an average particle size of 20 nm were uniformly distributed in the PF resole resin. The polymer nanocomposites with different percentages of Ag NPs (0.2 %, 0.4 %, and 0.6 %) have been coated on polyester fabric by a hand layup procedure. The fabric samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X‐ray analysis (EDAX) and X‐ray diffraction analysis. The thermal properties of samples have been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry and thermo‐ gravimetric analysis. The effect of Ag NPs on the adhesion features of resole resin coated polyester fabric was evaluated by the peel strength measurement. The optimized composite showed excellent antibacterial properties against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli bacteria. All the resole PF/Ag nanocomposite coated polyester fabrics are biocompatible. It has been proposed for a variety of applications in the fields of apparel, architecture and construction, insulation, automotive and chemical processing.
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