UTECH North America Announces In-Depth Polyurethanes Conference Program
LONDON & CHARLOTTE, NC – February 22, 2016 – The UTECH North America event has announced details of its two-day conference program taking place April 6th and 7th 2016 at Charlotte Convention Center, North Carolina, USA. Featuring nearly 40 detailed technical papers delivered in a total of eight sessions, the conference will cover the latest developments in the world of polyurethanes and reveal unique insights into the North American polyurethanes market. Visitors can now register to attend the free trade show and paid-for conference at: www.utech-north-america.com
Delegates at the two-day conference will benefit from updates on key issues facing the polyurethanes industry in North America as well as the chance to network with the world's leading practitioners. Among the highlights in the comprehensive program are two sessions focusing on sustainability. Other dedicated sessions from two parallel conference streams include those looking at polyurethanes technology in automotive applications, flexible foams, rigid foams, CASE products (coatings, adhesives, sealants and elastomers) and the latest advances in processing equipment. A final session looks at blowing agent innovations and two science papers.
In the science session Galen Suppes from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Missouri will present a unique paper on Simulation as a Tool to Design and Understand Urethane Formulations. He is preceded by Bin Shi, Technical Engineer at Wanhua, who will speak on the Introduction of Innovation R&D platform for polyurethane-Wanhua.
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No less than nine papers in sessions on both days of the conference will look at a range of sustainability issues including diverse innovations in biobased polyols. Wayne Willkomm, Market Development manager at Novomer, will also deliver a paper on Converge CO2-based polyols for rigid foam applications.
The first day’s program continues with a session looking at polyurethanes for automotive applications and focusing on key areas of noise reduction, air quality, seating and comfort versus lightweighting. Six papers in the parallel session look at machinery and processing innovations for polyurethane applications including premix technology, compression technology, dual axis mixing and mix head technologies. In the afternoon flexible foams session there are five papers on fire retardants, advances in stabilization of PU flexible foam and performance comparisons of renewable resource polyols in flexible, slabstock polyurethane foam.
The second day of the conference includes a sustainability round table, a session on CASE innovations including a new hydrophobic diol given by Herbert Chao, of Innovations Manager at Total Cray Valley. New catalysts for PU coatings and elastomers, and polycarbonatediol based prepolymer raw material for TPUs also feature in the CASE session. Four papers on rigid foams look at new multi-metal and amine catalysts, silicone surfactant reactivity, advances in pour-in-place foam and novel biobased polyols.
Among the major international companies with booths already booked at the accompanying UTECH North America 2016 trade show are Dow Chemical, Wanhua of China, Cannon, Hennecke Inc, DuPont & Tate & Lyle, Repi LLC, Honeywell, Chromaflo Technologies and Tosoh. The event is also supported again this year by the Polyurethane Manufacturers Association (PMA), the industry organization dedicated to advancing cast polyurethane technology.
