In mid-December 2018, 5 experts from China participated in a study tour in Germany and Switzerland.
During the tour, several companies were visited to get a better insight into the European XPS (extruded polystyrene) market, the recent developments as well as to receive valuable information for the following HCFC Phase-Out Management Plan (HPMP) II activities in terms of alternative extrusion and boards bonding technology. The tour was organized by GIZ Proklima (opens in a new window), on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) (opens in a new window) as part of the Chinese XPS foam sector plan under the Montreal Protocol, which runs from 2016 to 2026 with the target to completely phase-out all HCFCs (R22 and R142b) in the sector.
Participants of this study tour were partners from the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office in the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE/FECO (opens in a new window)) and technical Experts from the Beijing Technology and Business University (BTBU (opens in a new window)) and the Petrochemical Research Institute. The main topics during the different company visits have been mixing technologies, melt cooler, alternative blowing agents and mixtures, extrusion systems (single and tandem configurations), thermal bonding of XPS-boards, product and building standards and their certification in Europe and overarching quality of XPS foam, as well as trends in this sector in Europe. The gained information will be taken into account in the decision-making process for upcoming demonstration projects. The study tour will be followed-up by a workshop on XPS in China in April 2019.