Is it Polyurethane production, production mix, at plant, technology mix database from ecoinvent modeled for a foam?

Question

I possess a database for the production of Polyurethane. However, in the description of the database they say it is per 1kg of polyurethane flexible foam. I am aware that if we want to produce a polyurethane foam we need to add water to the formulation. The database has the following inputs:

Water content of the reference product: 0.0 kg

BILL OF MATERIALS

The bill of material includes the following inputs:

chemical factory, organics: 4e-10 unit

nitrogen, liquid: 0.019 kg

polyol: 0.664 kg

toluene diisocyanate: 0.388 kg

waste polyurethane: -0.02 kg

Electricity: 0.125 kWh.

My doubt is if this database is modeling a foam or not

Thank you

Answer 1

Hm in ecoinvent 3.6, there are PU production processes for foam, which also have some water input as you say. I did not find a non-foam production of PU in ecoinvent (e.g. here, APOS system model):

Comments

And there are many polyurethane formulations, using different catalysts and different polyols. So if you need some accuracy for your modelling of polyurethane (foamed or not) then it is better to obtain some primary information about that.
Chris