ABSTRACT
Since ‘energy saving’ has become the key requirement for the building industry (roof, wall, architectural panels etc.) and food preservation (cold store panels), the market for sandwich panels with PUR or PIR cores has shown a constantly increasing demand all over the world. This is due to the excellent thermal insulation properties combined with the extremely good physical-mechanical features, which are provided by the polyurethane foam.
The manufacturers of PU insulated panels mainly in the highly industrialised Countries, are demanding evermore higher quality standards. Further to that it is the number of manufacturers who prefer the use of highly automated plants is increasing. An ever greater number of Companies are changing their production technology from the discontinuous to continuous process as these plants offer the optimum quality of end-product and high productivity.
With more than 30 years experience in the market, OMS Group has a leading position in the sandwich panel production field, offering discontinuous and continuous production lines. The main differences between the two types of technologies presently used, can be summarised in Table 1.
Figure 1 shows typical polymerisation times of the PU foam between the two different production processes.
In our example, we assume the production of a panel 12 meters long, 1.2 m. width and different thickness 50-100-150-200 mm
Figure 2 shows the different productivity of the two types of plants
