Development of innovative polymer nanocomposite foams

随着对世界有限能源的需求不断增加，汽车和建筑行业迫切需要开发具有显著改善机械性能和绝缘性能的新型增值轻质产品。在此背景下，该项目旨在利用聚合物纳米复合材料和发泡技术来实现提高汽车和建筑行业产品性能和/或减轻产品重量的目标。轻型汽车零部件将与全球领先的汽车制造公司福特加拿大公司合作研究。轻量化汽车产品将减轻汽车重量，提高燃油效率。另一方面，将与同样在塑料材料和保温产品方面处于国际领先地位的SABIC Innovative Plastics Canada和seal Air Canada合作开发建筑行业的保温产品。由于空间采暖/制冷通常约占住宅和商业总能耗的40%，因此通过提高保温产品的保温效率将实现显著的节能。在本项目中，我们将深入研究材料组成、熔体复合技术和加工条件，以开发具有均匀分散纳米尺寸域的纳米复合材料。随后，将进行广泛的发泡研究，以在实验室规模的泡沫挤出和泡沫注塑设备上生产聚合物纳米复合泡沫。在此之后，还将使用中试规模的塑料发泡设备进行扩大实验，这些设备可在微孔塑料工业应用中心（CIAMP）获得。该项目的成功完成将使我们的行业合作伙伴能够生产先进的纳米复合材料产品，特别是轻量化汽车零部件和建筑材料，具有卓越的机械性能和成本效益。

With ever-increasing demands being made on the world's limited energy resources, the automotive and construction industries urgently need to develop new value-added light-weight products with significantly improved mechanical and insulation properties. In this context, this project aims to utilize the polymer nanocomposites and foaming technologies to achieve the goal of improving the properties and/or reducing the weight of the products for the automotive and construction industries. Lightweight automotive parts will be studied in collaboration with Ford Canada, a global leader in automotive manufacturing. Lightweight automotive products will reduce vehicle weight and increase fuel efficiency. On the other hand, insulation products for construction industry will be developed in collaboration with SABIC Innovative Plastics Canada and Sealed Air Canada, who are also international leaders in plastic materials and insulation products. Since space heating/cooling typically accounts for approximately 40% of the total residential and commercial energy consumed, significant energy savings will be realized by improving the thermal insulation efficiency of thermal insulation products. In this project, we will thoroughly investigate the materials compositions, the melt compounding techniques, and the processing conditions, required to develop nanocomposites having uniformly dispersed nano-sized domains. Subsequently, extensive foaming studies will be conducted to produce polymer nanocomposite foams in lab-scale foam extrusion and foam injection-molding equipment. Following this, scaled-up experiments will also be conducted with pilot-scale plastic foaming equipment, which is available at the Centre for Industrial Applications of Microcellular Plastics (CIAMP). The successful completion of this project will enable our industry partners to manufacture advanced nanocomposite products, especially lightweight automotive parts and construction materials, with superior mechanical properties in a cost-effective manner.