Emission of Nanosize Particles in the Process of Nanoclay Blending

Blending is one of the dustiest operations in the process of developing new fire-safe polyurethane foams. This paper presents the results of an investigation of the emission of nanosize particles released Nanofil®5 nanoclay is blended. Ten 5–20 g samples of  Nanofil®5 were blended for 30–204 s. The level of nanosize particles was monitored continuously over 3 days with a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) with a long differential mobility analyser (DMA) to measure particle number size distributions in the 17–604 nm range and a P-TRAK ultrafine particle counter (UPC) to measure particle number concentrations in the 20–1000 nm range. The results showed that blending released 17–34 nm particles. The total number concentrations from the SMPS were compared with those from the P-TRAK; similar results were obtained.