Cancelled: May General Business Meeting And Technical Program In St. Petersburg
Dear PFA Members and Supporters:
The Polyurethane Foam Association has decided to cancel its May 2020 General Business Meeting and Technical Program in St Petersburg, FL.
On April 2, the PFA Executive Committee determined that the safety of member company executives, guests and presenters required a pause in the association’s schedule of productive, well-attended conferences. First-rate programming assembled for the meeting, including our keynote presenter and mulitiple Technical presentations, await you at our Fall Meeting, November 4-5, 2020, at the Omni La Mansion del Rio in San Antonio, TX.
If you already registered for St. Petersburg, Kay Wright will contact you to refund your fee or apply it to the San Antonio conference.
PFA will remain an active resource for you during these challenging times. Our Technical Committee is compiling best practices to keep your workforce safe, and we will make this information available to the membership shortly.
PFA staff continues to monitor, analyze and influence standards and regulations. We continue to develop member tools and respond to your inquiries. With the cancellation of the May meeting, PFA will step up online communications to make sure you get time-sensitive information.
We look forward to bringing our industry together once the health threat recedes. In San Antonio, we’ll have added cause for celebration, as PFA marks its 40th Anniversary.
Thank you for your continued support of our association, and please stay safe.
Chip Holton
President
Polyurethane Foam Association
May 2020 PFA Meeting Schedule
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM CertiPUR-US® Meeting – Open to all
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM Industry Issues Forum – Paid registration required
The Industry Issues Forum features presenters on pressing topics for the industry.
Economic Forecast: Assessment of Global Economic Trends Shaping Business and Investment
Michael Brozzo is a Regional Director supporting Schwab Asset Management Solutions. As a Regional Director, Mr. Brozzo delivers product expertise across the spectrum of proprietary products within Charles Schwab Investment Advisory, Inc. (CSIA) and Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. (CSIM). He also provides education on the third-party asset management offerings available on the separately managed account platform at Schwab.
Mr. Brozzo has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Previously, he was a portfolio strategist for CSIA supporting the ThomasPartners and Windhaven strategies. Prior to CSIA, Mr. Brozzo held several roles within Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. Most recently, he was vice president, financial consultant, where he developed financial plans for high-net-worth clients and provided a full range of financial services. Before that, Mr. Brozzo was a private client portfolio consultant, managing assets for high-net-worth clients
Mr. Brozzo earned a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Central Florida. He is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner
Thursday, May 21, 2020
9:00 AM – Noon General Business Meeting – Paid Registration Required
Keynote Speaker: Steve Vogel
Steve Vogel is the author of Betrayal in Berlin: The True Story of the Cold War’s Most Audacious Espionage Operation, published in 2019 by Custom House, a William Morrow imprint. He is a veteran journalist who reported for The Washington Post for more than two decades. His reporting about the war in Afghanistan was part of a package of Washington Post stories selected as a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize. Vogel covered the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the Pentagon, and the building’s subsequent reconstruction. Vogel covered the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. He covered the war in Iraq as an embedded journalist with an Army airborne brigade, as well as U.S. military operations in Rwanda, Somalia, and the Balkans. A graduate of the College of William and Mary with a degree in Government, he received a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. His previous books include Through The Perilous Fight and The Pentagon. You can see him on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart here. He lives in Maryland with his children. Learn more on his website. www.stevevogelsite.com. His latest book is available on Amazon here. (Steve will be signing copies of Betrayal in Berlin at the meeting.)
2:00 PM – 5:00 Technical Program – Paid registration required
Improving Viscoelastic Foam Cure. Jane Kniss, Evonik
The flexible slabstock polyurethane foam industry continuously strives to improve the productivity, quality and economics of polyurethane articles, and supplier innovations support this effort. One ongoing challenge involves progress toward lower and ultimately no emissions from the final polyurethane slabstock foam article. Cure profiles during the manufacturing process for most medium to low density foam grades are acceptable with state-of-the-art, non-emissive catalysis. Unfortunately, higher density foams, especially visco-elastic foam, do not always have a suitable cure profile to avoid delay in foam handling and fabrication. This necessitates the supplemental use of emissive, tertiary amines. In higher density foam, previous generations of non-emissive amines, when used alone, required high use levels due to the lack of water inhibiting development of rapid thermal kinetics, delaying effective cure and risking sub-standard final foam physical properties.
This paper reports on recent work to offer the flexible slabstock market non-emissive amine catalysts that provide efficient gel catalysis, even in higher density, visco-elastic foam.
Novel Catalyst for Low Compression Set and Low Odor Foams for Bed-in-a-Box Mattresses. Ryohei Takahashi Hiroshi Fujiwara, Yusuke Morioka, Katsumi Tokumoto, Jeff Tucker, TOSOH Specialty Chemicals USA, Inc.
In recent years, the growth of bed-in-a-box products has been a major feature of the mattress and foam markets. These products, typically sold online, are vacuum-compressed for shipping. Customers expect such mattresses to recover quickly to their functional shape upon unpacking, highlighting the compression set of polyurethane foam components. The choice of amine catalysts for FPF production is an important factor in compression set. Generally, reactive amine catalysts have difficulty achieving a low compression set due to the large catalyst dosage (insufficient gelling activity), which limits polymer growth of polyurethane foams by reacting with isocyanates.
A separate issue, but one also tied to the use of amine catalysts, is the emission of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) from FPF products such as mattresses. This phenomenon can compromise consumer acceptance and potentially raises issues of Indoor Air Quality. The use of reactive amine catalysts is one option to reduce VOCs and odor. Reactive amine catalysts are incorporated into the polyurethane structure, which prevents volatilization of amine compounds and enables lower VOCs and odor levels.
For these reasons, amine catalysts that exhibit low compression set value and low odor levels simultaneously are in a growing demand from the industry. TOSOH has developed a novel reactive amine catalyst: RZETA®. RZETA® provides strong gelling ability and small catalyst dosage among reactive catalysts, yielding low compression set. In addition, RZETA® is completely incorporated into the structure and eliminate amine emissions, which reduces VOCs and odor levels.
Workplace Violence. Information Protection. Labor Disputes. Electronic Security Systems. These are just some of the Threats a Corporate Security Team can Support and Protect Against. Anthony Byrd, BASF
Abstract posted shortly.
Methods Development for Assessing Pink Stain on Polyurethane Foam. Daniel L. Price Ph.D., Interface Inc.
Staining of the built environment by microorganisms has been a nuisance for product aesthetics and overall quality for decades. This is especially true in harsh marine environments where furnishings see periods of saturation followed by periods of dryness and harsh sun exposure. Beyond the familiar black, brown and green stains often associated with mold colonization of plasticized vinyl is a microbially produced pink pigment called “Prodigiosin”. Prodigiosin can be produced by bacteria and actinomycetes.
Actinomycete production is often associated with pink staining of vinyl and other upholstery components including polyurethane foams. Standard tests for assessing pink staining on flat vinyl upholstery (i.e. ASTM E 1428) have existed for decades.
In recent years the need to assess polyurethane foam resistance to pink staining has created technical challenges that were overcome through collaborative methods development and modifications to address the open-cell non-uniform topography of many polyurethane foams. Our work reviews the use of ASTM 1428 on vinyl and details protocol modifications designed to provide uniform contact of the pink stain inoculum with the foam surface. An update on methods development and a recent interlaboratory study involving the foam pink stain method will also be presented.
Baumer B Plus Connect, Uwe Scharfy, Baumer
Abstract posted shortly.