Polyphen

Competing products generally offer one or two of these features, but not all three together. Examples of such products are polystyrene, polyurethane, polyisocyanurate and phenolic foams. While Polyphen^® was originally developed with the aim of creating an ideal core material for sandwich panels, especially steel clad panels, Polyphen^® can be used for most rigid foam applications. These include lagging of pipes, tanks and air conditioning ducts. It is a user friendly material, being light weight, easy to cut and with a surface that is not fibrous, friable or brittle. Polyphen^® is also environmentally friendly in that it is produced in a process with zero ozone depletion potential.

Polystyrene foam was developed 50 years ago, and is widely used today, on account of its low cost and excellent mechanical properties. However, its fire performance is very poor as it melts and burns readily.

Insurance companies world-wide are increasingly expressing concern over the use of polystyrene foam in steel clad factory wall and ceiling panels, as the foam has been found to have contributed significantly to the severity of many fires, often leading to total loss of buildings and equipment.

Polyurethane foam has somewhat higher fire resistance than polystyrene foam, but still burns and is much more expensive. Polyisocyanurate and phenolic foams have moderate to good fire resistance but are expensive and in the case of phenolic foam, too brittle to be used as core in steel clad sandwich panels. In contrast to all of the above mentioned foams, the newly developed Polyphen^® meets the three most important requirements of an ideal panel core material,
i.e.

• high fire resistance,
• mechanical resilience
• low cost.