The History of Spray Foam Insulation

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Although spray foam insulation as we know it today truly emerged in the 1980s, spray foam actually has its roots several decades further in the past, beginning with the development of polyurethane foam in the 1940s by Otto Bayer.

Otto Bayer, an industrial chemist, actually began working with polyurethane in Germany during the late 1930s. This technology was brought to the United States in the early 1940s by David Eynon, the president of Mobay, a war effort conglomerate created from the partnering of two chemical industry giants, Monsanto and the Bayer Corporation شركة عزل فوم بالدمام. Although Otto Bayer worked for Bayer Corporation, he was not related to the company’s founding family.

During the 1940s, polyurethane polymers were used primarily in military and aviation applications. The production of war machines for the World War II conflict drove most of the applications of these high-grade plastic polymers for the duration of the war.

It was not until the 1950s that polyurethane began to be used in home insulation. It was the invention of the “Blendometer” that allowed for expansion of polyurethane application to the home insulation realm. The Blendometer was the first machine able to mix components for the creation of polyurethane foam and was created by Walter Baughman in 1953.

The Blendometer allowed for the strategic mixing of chemicals to create what Baughman called a plastic elastomer or an expanding foam. Liquid when applied, this plastic elastomer expanded into a thick foam and eventually hardened upon drying.

Baughman’s Blendometer was still a partially manual process, with humans tilting trays of chemicals to mix foam. While the machine did allow for the use of polyurethane in home insulation as well as in other home-related applications, like air conditioner insulation, it was still a technology in its infancy and one that made widespread use of polyurethane as a residential insulation material no less cumbersome.

Polyurethane polymers were used in a variety of means throughout the following decades, with incredible advancements being made in the auto industry applications of the material in particular. However, it would be more than two decades before the foam would become widely used in home insulation processes.