Sodium hydrogen carbonate as an alternative blowing agent in the preparation of palm-based polyurethane foam

An environmental-friendly blowing agent has been used to fabricate flexible polyurethane (PU) foam. Polyurethane foam was prepared from palm kernel oil-based monoester polyol (PKO-p) via prepolymerization method. Acetone has been used as solvent in this study. The developed polyurethane foam was characterized using tensile, differential scanning calorimetry analysis (DSC), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), optical microscope and drop shape analyzer. The mechanical properties of the PU-reference (PU-R) and PU-NaHCO3 foam was analyzed by tensile using ASTM D 3574-01. From the results, the elongation of PU- NaHCO3 shows reduction to 26.3 % compared to PU-R. The DSC showed two glass transition temperatures in all samples that belonged to the PU-R and PU-NaHCO3. TGA revealed that the incorporation of sodium hydrogen carbonate into the PU system did not show significant difference as compared to the control PU. The morphology of both PU was investigated using optical microscope. Contact angle has been measured to determine the hydrophobicity of the PU. The PU- NaHCO3 exhibited an increase in contact angle (93.1°).