The effect of water and sodium hydrogen carbonate content on flexible polyurethane's microstructure,water, and mechanical properties

It is well known that blowing agents (BAs) and polyol are essential components in polyurethane (PU) composition. Utilizing renewable sources in the material's formulation might reduce its environmental hazards while extending its possible engineering applications. In this study, the samples have been synthesized by using palm kernel oil-based polyol (PKOP). Water and sodium hydrogen carbonate (SHB) have been used as BAs. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has shown that adding the mix of BAs is causing the cells' average size to increase up to 227% and have reduced the lamellae width by up to 2% in comparison with the reference sample. The water tests have illustrated that combining two parts per hundred polyol by weight (php) water and 25 php SHB to the sample has increased its water capacity up to 617%. However, the samples are only able to retain 6% of the absorbed water at the 7th day. It has been also found that porosity has affected the water uptake and all the samples are following Fick's diffusion law, and diffusion is correlated to the square root of time. Multivariable power least squares method (MPLSM) and moving least squares method (MLSM) have been applied to find the relation between tear resistance value and BAs ratio. It is found that both methods have a dominant variable compared to the other variables, but MLSM provided optimizable equation with better R².