Icynene innovates with foam blowing agent from Chemours

The Chemours Company (Chemours), a global chemistry company with leading market positions in titanium technologies, fluoroproducts and chemical solutions, announced today (July 25) that leading spray foam manufacturer, Icynene, is utilising Opteon™ 1100 foam blowing agent for use in its high-performance spray foam insulation solutions. Icynene plans to use Opteon™ 1100, and add it to its portfolio of new polyurethane spray foam products that help deliver superior insulation performance with a lower global warming impact.

Opteon™ 1100 helps meet Icynene’s need for a non-flammable, high efficiency and low global warming potential (GWP) blowing agent for use in polyurethane foams. The excellent thermal conductivity and spray ability help Icynene to improve the performance of its foam insulation, while the low GWP enables them to support their customers in helping meet the upcoming regulatory driven conversions across North America, the E.U. and Japan. In addition, the unique chemical structure helps provide outstanding stability and versatility, thus maximizing the range of customer formulations and geographic product considerations.

"The performance and environmental benefits of Opteon™ 1100 make it a good option for developing our new low-GWP spray foam insulation products," said Larry Genyn, Icynene vice president of technology. "The incredible ease of application enables us to design great new systems quickly."

"Over the past couple of years, Icynene and Chemours have developed a valuable partnership that enables us to deliver high performance solutions to our customers," said Howard Deck, Icynene CEO. "Our development work with Opteon™ 1100 is positioning our business to provide long term solutions to the spray foam industry."

"With this announcement it’s evident to Chemours that Icynene sees Chemours, with Opteon™ 1100, as a key global player in the high-performance, low-GWP spray foam insulation market," said Paul Kirsch, President Chemours Fluoroproducts. "This along with other recent adoptions has signaled a movement within the industry towards high performance, low GWP blowing agents, which is why we have continually invested to bring these products to market."

Chemours recently announced that it is close to starting up the world’s first full-scale production facility for HFO-1336mzz, which is the chemical name for Opteon™ 1100. This facility will begin production mid-year 2017 and will add capacity for low GWP foam blowing agents and refrigerants. Chemours is already the capacity leader for products based on HFO-1234yf and this new facility will help further strengthen the company’s ability to help meet the growing global demand for Opteon™ branded products.

The Opteon™ portfolio of fluorochemicals from Chemours represents a breakthrough line of low GWP solutions. They were developed to help meet increasingly stringent global regulations while generally maintaining or improving performance compared to the products they replace. As the leading supplier of more environmentally sustainable foams, refrigerants and aerosol propellants, Chemours has and continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to develop this portfolio of new products and additional capacity as the need for low GWP solutions grows throughout the world.