Reticulation of Aqueous Polyurethane Systems Controlled by DSC Method

Abstract: The DSC method has been employed to monitor the kinetics of reticulation ofaqueous polyurethane systems without catalysts, and with the commercial catalyst of zirconium(CAT^®XC-6212) and the highly selective manganese catalyst, the complex Mn(III)-diacetylacetonemaleinate (MAM). Among the polyol components, the acrylic emulsions wereused for reticulation in this research, and as suitable reticulation agents the water emulsiblealiphatic polyisocyanates based on hexamethylendoisocyanate with the different contents ofNCO-groups were employed. On the basis of DSC analysis, applying the methods of Kissinger,Freeman-Carroll and Crane-Ellerstein the pseudo kinetic parameters of the reticulation reactionof aqueous systems were determined. The temperature of the examination ranged from 50oC to450oC with the heat rate of 0.5oC/min. The reduction of the activation energy and the increaseof the standard deviation indicate the catalytic action of the selective catalysts of zirconium andmanganese. The impact of the catalysts on the reduction of the activation energy is thestrongest when using the catalysts of manganese and applying all the three afore-said methods.The least aberrations among the stated methods in defining the kinetic parameters wereobtained by using the manganese catalyst.