Thermochemical study of the briquetting process of mattress foams

Abstract

The production of flexible polyurethane foam (FPUF) briquettes has been tested at four different temperatures (160, 170, 180 and 190 °C) and with four different compacting pressures (17, 24, 35 and 48 MPa), selecting 180 °C and 35 MPa as the best briquetting conditions. In addition, heterogeneous briquettes have been moulded employing 10, 18 and 25% of viscoelastic memory foam (VMF) with FPUF and the same proportions for latex foam (LATEX) with FPUF, at 180 °C and 24 and 35 MPa of compacting pressure. For VMF + FPUF briquettes mixtures of up to 18% of VMF showed high quality, whereas this proportion decreased by up to 10% for LATEX. The FTIR and TG-IR analyses were conducted to investigate the mechanism of adhesion bonding in heterogeneous briquettes considering that the FPUF acted as a binder. The temperature (180 °C) and pressure (35 MPa) selected to mould the heterogeneous briquettes seem to be enough to achieve the break of part of the urethane bond present in the FPUF improving the mobility of long polymeric chains which allowed the bonding of different materials.