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I t is essential in today's marketplace that if a company is to survive then it must be able to take advantage of new technological advances. In the urethane market, one new technological advancement is the waste stream-derived polyester polyol. These polyols are marketed at a cost which is much lower than the cost of conventional polyols for rigid urethane foam. The use of a polyester polyol can greatly lower the direct manufacturing cost of rigid urethane foam. Thus, there has been widespread interest and acceptance of the polyester polyols in the rigid urethane foam market. This acceptance can be observed by the tremendous increase in the number of commercially available polyester polyols.Unfortunately, one problem exists with the utilization of the waste stream-derived polyester polyols. Due to the incompatibility of these polyester polyols with the other components of the B side, the percentage of polyester polyol that can be used in a formulation has been limited to low levels. Compatibilizing agents, i.e., co-polyols, have been developed to increase the level of polyester polyol in a formulation. Formulations have been developed with the polyester polyols and their co-polyols for urethane modified isocyanurate foams [1,2,3].With the introduction of various new polyester polyols, a question that now arises is: &dquo;Can the new polyester polyols be formulated at high levels with existing compatibilizing co-polyols?&dquo; It is the objective of this paper to illustrate the ability to formulate urethane modified isocyanurate foams with high levels of the newly commercialized polyester polyols. This objective is achieved by using compatibilizing co-polyols which carry the Akzo Chemie America tradename of Armol©. NEW POLYESTER POLYOLSThere is a large group of newly commercialized polyester polyols. These polyols are manufactured from polyester waste streams. The polyester polyols which will be used in formulations presented in this paper are: Terol 250 (Oxid, Inc.), Chardol 570 (Chardonol Corp.), Freol 21-3150 (Freeman Chemical Company), and Terate 203 (Hercules, Inc.). All of these polyols have a functionality of two and they are aromatic based polyester polyols. B side formulations were made using the new polyester polyols at 80 percent level of the total polyol weight with various compatibilizers. In each formulation, the B side did not remain a homogeneous solution and there was phase separation. At this point, an investigation was begun to determine what factors caused B side nonhomogeneity in the new polyester polyols. A series of polyester polyols was examined. In this group of polyols there were polyester polyols which gave a stable B side at the 80 percent level and the new polyester polyols which gave a nonhomogeneous B side at the 80 percent level. The only analytical method that was able to produce any correlation with B side stability was gel permeation chromatography (GPC).Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) is an analytical method which separates the different molecular weight fractions of t...

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