Insights
1993: Always staying cool
| Petra Rehmet
Pentane replaces CFCs
At the beginning of the 1990s, the first CFC-free insulating foam based on pentane revolutionises the production of refrigerators.
The research into ozone-damaging CFC from the mid-1970s and the subsequent discovery of the ozone hole at the start of the 1980s were decisive factors in launching the environmental protection movement, which in 1987 resulted in the Montreal Protocol and a worldwide ban on CFC, a substance used widely in industry that is very difficult to degrade. Industry reacted and stopped the use and production of CFC at the start of the 1990s. The search for alternative, environment-friendly blowing agents for PUR solid foams, which are also used for insulation in cooling units, began.
Soon after, the substance pentane was discovered for foaming agents. KraussMaffei works with its finger on the pulse of the times, and already in 1993 we presented the pentane premixing station "Pentamix". In the mixing station, the blowing agent pentane is conveyed to the premixing container in the desired concentration, where it is mixed with polyol. The metering machine then automatically provides the day tank with the preconditioned PUR component – an innovation that reflects the pioneering spirit of KraussMaffei. For the past 50 years, KraussMaffei has been successfully working with reaction process machinery. Since 2002, the company has been concentrating the activities in the area of white goods under a single roof at KraussMaffei Italiana, whose foaming units are still used worldwide at leading refrigerator manufacturers.
