Extrusion is the most productive manufacturing process in construction plastics, but nowadays it is only appropriate for thermoplastics (PE, PP, PVC, PET, PS, PC, etc). Thermoplastics extrusion involves a high energy expenditure due to the high pressure and temperature required to melt the material during the manufacturing. In construction, PVC shares 54% of all plastic used, and extruded products (profiles, frames, pipes, downspouts, etc) represent around 70% of all plastic applications. PVC is a highly questioned plastic which environmental concerns (dioxins when burned, Bisfenol-A as plasticizers, organo-chlorinated compounds when degraded, etc) are still being discussed by the EU Comission. Moreover, the fossil-origin of thermoplastics makes altogether conventional extrusion a low sustainable technology.
On the other hand, PUR (Polyurethane), the most versatile polymer material with a great potential to be implemented in the construction market as structural and functional plastic, shows excellent thermal, mechanical & chemical properties with one of the highest thermal and acoustic insulating capacity. In addition, PUR has a high potential biobased content (up to 90%) with the greatest production capacity of all bio-based plastics (>2.000 Mtons/y). However, this high performance plastic material lacked for a long time of an appropriate continuous technology to provide extruded products. To address this issue, INDRESMAT has launched EXTRU-PUR, a low energy consuming and highly productive process that enables for first time the use of PUR in extruded products to increase the technical properties, durability and high performance of construction plastics, making them more circular materials by the use of renewable resources and its ease to recycle the end-of-life products.
To fight Climate Change, nowadays the priority is reducing fossil CO2 emissions in all sectors, and particularly in the construction market (the 2nd highest plastic consuming market), buildings are responsible of 40% of Carbon Emissions, where 65% of them come from space heating. This situation has generated a high interest in the use of new clean energy sources, and at the same time, the reduction of energy consumption where insulation is a crucial activity to achieve the Nearly Zero Energy Buildings. Around a 25% of the energy lost through the windows (the main weak points for heat leaking in façades) is due to thermal conduction through the frames & profiles. This is why Highly Energy Efficient Windows (HEEW) existing in the market use combinations of different materials to introduce a thermal barrier. However, these complex multimaterial windows makes difficult the recycling at end-of-life.
Considering the low energy consumption of our extrusion technology, the high technical properties, insulation capacity & sustainability of PUR, together with the need for reducing heat leaking and improve the circularity and sustainability of window materials; EXTRU-PUR technology will provide window frames & profiles made from PUR as single material and will definitely become a game changer when implemented at large scale in the rising construction plastics market.
