Modification of plastics (5): production of polysterene foam

Principle
Suitable plastics are pre-polymerized in granular form, which can be further processed to basic material or similar products later. A foamed plastic can be easily produced by addition of highly volatile substances during the polymerization. Polystyrene foam from polystyrene beads is produced in this experiment. The processing technology shown in this experiment is often applied industrially.
The propellant agent containing polystyrene beads (diameter 0.5 - 2 mm) must be prefoamed by stirring it in steam at 105°C and 0,2 bar, and afterwards postsintered at 100°C to form a foamed plastic with close cell structure. The volume of the starting substance increases hereby between 20 and 80 times of the initial volume. The foamed plastic has a density between 13 and 30 kg/m³.

Learning objectives

•  Modeling with plastics

Benefits

• Easy teaching and efficient learning by using interactive experimentation PHYWE-Software
• Experiment is part of a complete solution set with experiments for the topic Chemistry of Polymers matched with international curriculum: all topics are covered