Pilot plant up-scaling of tannin foams

• Tannin-furanic foams have been produced in up-scaled dimensions.
• The production of the foams was successfully transferred from lab to a pilot industrial continuous press.
• The properties of the produced materials remain almost unaltered.
• The characteristic of the tannin foams are promising for replacing synthetic insulation materials.
• The up-scaled tannin-furanic foams are suitable to produce a variety of sandwich panels.

In the last years many studies were led to characterise and optimise the tannin-furanic foams. In the present work the up-scaling of the production from laboratory to industrial scale is discussed. The tannin foams produced in an industrial pilot plant have shown comparable properties with the laboratory-produced foams. In particular the panels manufactured in the continuous press presented slightly higher bulk densities of around 176 kg/m3 (+20%) which led to higher mechanical properties and thermal conductivities. The up-scaled tannin foams of around 150 kg/m3 presented 20–25% enhanced compression resistances (28 MPa) and thermal conductivities (55 mW/m × K). Lightweight sandwich panels with various side layers were produced directly in the press, without the need of external adhesives. From the marketing viewing angle, the up-scaled tannin foams show higher densities than the other commercial synthetic insulation materials but the mechanical and insulating performances observed are promising and suggests interesting industrial developments for this innovative bio-based product.

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