Tetracycline as a pot life extender for high-filled polyurethane composites

High-filled polyurethane composites based on hydroxyl terminated polybutadiene (HTPB) are widely used. The HTPB composite slurry should have a good viscosity at the end of the mixing to prepare convenient casting. The time available for casting after curative addition is called pot life.1,2 Pot life extension is the topic of different researches recently. There are different methods to extend pot life which can be categorized to material and process approaches. Tetracycline addition is a new way to extend the pot life and called pot life extender. Studies showed that pot life of high-filled polyurethane composites based on HTPB can be considerably extended to 2-4 times by addition of tetracycline. Elamin et al. showed that the addition of 0.1% of tetracycline decrease viscosity build up rate or extend the pot life significantly (Figure 1). Moreover, mechanical properties of high-filled polyurethane composites based on HTPB containing tetracycline are better in comparison to without tetracycline.3

Keywords:

pot life , pot life extender , viscosity build up , binder system , polyurethane composite