Hyundai Motor Company’s Ulsan plant will exclusively use BASF’s Elastoflex polyurethane foam combination to manufacture car seats. This highly elastic polyurethane foam has a low VOC content and is mainly used in the production of car seats and headrests. Compared to traditional foams, Elastoflex improves comfort, elasticity and load-bearing properties of seats and headrests. In order to meet the most stringent emission control regulations, BASF has also optimized the production process of polyether polyols. Polyether polyols are used in the production of Elastoflex polyurethane foam, which is used in the production of high-comfort seats. The optimized production process enables BASF to produce specialty polyether polyols with low cost, high performance and low VOC emissions. In tests conducted by the world’s leading testing agency SGSKorea, Elastoflex reduced acetaldehyde and formaldehyde emissions by more than 30%, helping to improve in-vehicle air quality and the health of car drivers. Field tests have also shown that the newly developed polyurethane composition has excellent flow properties and reduced product defect rates, resulting in improved production line productivity.
New materials have powerful advantages. In the production of automobiles, car seats occupy a large area, which directly determines the number of materials used. Cars gradually affect people’s way of life and make people’s travel more and more convenient. Traditional car seats are mostly leather products, and most of them are made of sponge and other materials, which lack a certain degree of comfort. Nowadays, flexible polyurethane foam plastics As one of the production materials of car seats, it is of high quality and low price, and is gradually applied by manufacturers to a large number of car production. “Polyurethane foam is a kind of relatively soft new material with certain elasticity. It has many pores, density sole, good resilience, sound absorption, breathability, good thermal insulation and other properties. It is used in all aspects of life. Many manufacturers choose High-elastic polyurethane foam is used as a material for car seats, and the performance of this material is gradually accepted by people.
The static comfort of the car seat refers to whether the matching relationship between the car seat and the human body can provide users with comfortable sitting conditions. The static comfort of the seat is related to the size parameters, surface treatment and adjustment characteristics of the seat. The composition of the seat is mostly foam material with high elasticity and low density, which can prevent the material from burning. Today, the Chinese government has stricter requirements on automotive materials, requiring the maximum combustion value to be ≤70mm/min. Such regulations greatly increase the safety of the car itself, and the flexible polyurethane foam with this burning rate standard is used. Doing saddles is also gradually appearing in the field of vision of manufacturers. The wear resistance of flexible polyurethane foam is used as the raw material of car seats. The fragility of many plastic products makes it impossible to use for a long time, but flexible polyurethane foam has good wear resistance. It has strong tensile strength and tear resistance, which makes it have superior performance. Compared with traditional car seats, its cost is low, the use time is long, and its plasticity is strong. favored by manufacturers.
The development of the polyurethane foam industry is inseparable from the improvement of production capacity. As one of the six major synthetic materials in the world that attracts the most attention, the scale of the polyurethane foam industry has expanded rapidly in recent years. According to the “2016-2022 China Polyurethane Industry Market Trend Forecast and Trend Forecast Research Report” released by Booz Data: the global output of polyurethane products has exceeded 21 million tons, of which foam system and non-foam system products each account for half of the country, and its huge growth potential is prepared for attention. The trend of production scale is obvious In production, the polyurethane industry, like most chemical industries, has an increasingly obvious trend of intensification and scale. As polyurethane production technology becomes more and more mature, products become more popular and application fields continue to expand, manufacturers have found that in order to maintain a certain level of profitability, they must have certain economies of scale.As a result, the scale of new enterprises is getting bigger and bigger, and the production capacity is also increasing rapidly. Consumer acceptance is still unclear, and there are more details to be improved. As mentioned above, high-elastic polyurethane foam is a new type of material, and people have not yet had a deep understanding of its characteristics, so there has not been a large market awareness yet. Because the car is closely related to people’s lives after being purchased, and because of its high price, many families will not replace the car for a long time after purchasing it. Evaluating its various properties, the seat made of flexible polyurethane foam has gradually become one of the focuses of people’s attention.
Compared with traditional seats, seats made of new flexible polyurethane foam have many uncertainties. Therefore, it has not yet become a must-have object in the minds of consumers. First of all, the chemical reaction of the “polyurethane foam” itself. After the flexible polyurethane foam is made into a car seat, due to long-term sunlight exposure, the airtightness of the car is high, and the temperature inside the car will be extremely high. Reaction and release of toxic gas will seriously endanger the life safety of drivers. According to relevant survey results, a large amount of siloxane will enter many finished automobile products during production, and its own components cannot directly produce toxic substances, but in During a certain volatilization process, siloxane will gradually be scattered into the flexible polyurethane foam in the car seat, enhance the volatility of the flexible polyurethane foam, and generate toxic gases. Therefore, it is necessary to actively improve this material and reduce its activity.In addition, according to ergonomic requirements, the car seat needs to be designed as a product with a certain curved surface, which is difficult to achieve for the box-type foaming process of “polyurethane foam”. Therefore, only the molding foaming process can be used at present. , to a certain extent restricts the development of “high elastic polyurethane foam”. As we all know, in summer, the sun shines directly into the interior of the car. Due to the better sealing of the car, it will cause high temperature in the car. If the foam is toxic, the high temperature and airtightness inside the car will cause poisoning of the people in the car. At the same time, If the foam contains a large amount of organic matter, if it melts and volatilizes at high temperature, a large amount of organic matter will volatilize on the glass surface of the car, which will seriously affect the driver’s vision and cause traffic accidents. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of the performance of this kind of foam is required , Only in this way can this material be better used, gradually accepted by drivers and accepted by many consumers. From the perspective of consumer awareness and education and negative comments, there is still a long way to go before high-elasticity polyurethane foam becomes the standard for future car seats.
But in the long run, although the high elastic polyurethane foam itself has certain defects, its advantages are more important. I believe that in the near future, with the improvement of people’s scientific and technological level, the shortcomings of flexible polyurethane foam will be a Once overcome, the automobile production technology and the safety factor of the automobile have been further improved. Only then will highly resilient polyurethane foam have a chance to become standard in future car seats.
Post time: Oct-17-2022