Soy vs. Polyurethane: Spray Foam Wars
Polyurethane spray foam was invented in a laboratory accident in the first half of the twentieth century. Originally used as coatings in aviation applications, foam polyurethane products evolved and were eventually applied to home building situations where hermetic sealing by insulation was desired. Over the years spray foam went through ups and downs: at everlasting holy war with fiberglass; formulating a version that discouraged mold growth; making the price more reasonable; and of course – how environmentally friendly can a ultra-efficient house really be filled to the gills with polyurethane?
Enter the BioBased soy-oil based spray foam product. BioBased Spray Foam Insulation is a spray foam with all the good traits of its polyurethane forerunner, like being able to hermetically seal a house to ultra efficiency – while being installed in a fraction of the time that fiberglass takes. BioBased ratchets this up a notch by formulating their product from soy bean oil, a renewable resource which also renders the insulation inert – no more mold.
As any sage in your life may have told you at one point or the other, there is no such thing as a free lunch. So what’s the catch with soy foam? The product performs, it delivers serious cost and environmental impact reductions to the home owner and it is renewable. But soy is a monolithic crop. It has taken biodiversity out of thousands of American farms and pushed fresh foods to an afterthought in the place of cheap and easy to prepare processed protein substitutes. Is a product that would encourage more expansion of soy bean growth really as good for the environment as the end user merchandise? In the grand scheme of environmental impact, maybe polyurethane foam is the better product after all. A thorough study is in order.
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13 Comments, Comment or Ping
Shane
Re: Trimmings. Any demos I have seen result in 30 – 50% excess. While this excess can be cut off, and reused at the bacl of the next cavity, it does seem that the contractors should be better at judging the amount needed, as opposed to the amount that is easy to apply. If a thinner layer could be applied, a plastic-coated board, or stiff plastic film could be applied to hold the material from expanding quite so much.
Apr 26th, 2009
Ivan Crago Missoula Realtor
Maybe I’m off base with this thought as I have used fiberglass in the homes I’ve built, but can’t the trimmings from foam be used in the ceiling as part of the fill to get to whatever insualting value you are wanting to achieve and not have any waste at all?
Mar 25th, 2009
SHS
George,
Great idea. Whether it is technically feasible is another thing. Let us know if you hear from them.
SHS
Mar 16th, 2009
George J. Birds Jr.
Below is an e-mail I wrote a short while ago to Tiger Foam. No response yet. What do you think of this idea?
Thanks, George J. Birds Jr.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tiger Foam
technical@tigerfoam.com
02-07-09
Dear Technical Department,
I have been pondering which way to build my new home. I definitely want to install foam for all of the roof and wall insulation. I also want a conventionally stick built home in order to eliminate the high cost of Structural Insulated Panels. My problem comes from the necessity of having to remove the overspray of Tiger Foam after filling the wall and roof cavities. This removed foam needs to be either disposed of or used in additional insulated areas. Is it unreasonable to have a special gun to apply the liquid foam and at the same time mix ground up foam as the wall cavities are being filled? It is essentially similar to fiberglass being shredded from a big roll and mixed with resin as tanks or boats are being made. My idea would take more equipment than the present Tiger Foam Kits, but it would make a great way to get rid of the trimmings from the removed foam as well as a way to utilize scrap foam. This may cut the final cost of the Tiger Foam because there would be very little waste; and the added ground up scrap foam would reduce the amount of Tiger Foam needed to fill a cavity. Not that I want to make your sales of your foam kits decrease; but the idea may even increase sales because contractors could save in the long run because foam from trimmings and scrap is being utilized as they insulate the cavity. Let me know if my idea has merit or if it is for the birds.
Sincerely,
George J. Birds Jr.
Lebec, CA
birdsgyjk@wmconnect.com
Mar 6th, 2009
Don
That is a question that needs to be asked about all agricultural production. Soybeans, like other agricultural commodities, are, as I stated above, a fungible product – in other words, you cannot isolate the source of the commodity – say choose to only buy “organic” soy or even soy produced in a certain region. Even if all agricultural equipment were running on biofuels (for which there is not sufficient supply), there will still be the impact of the pollution from their combustion. Almost every human action has an environmental impact. The good news is that, according a McKinsey report, increasing insulation is the best investment one can make environmentally. Sure, energy resources are consumed in its production – even if a small amount is replaced with bio-sourced materials. But the payback on that consumption is at least 70-fold over the life of the building.
Feb 21st, 2009
SHS
Great question Brett. In order to bring this thing to the next level we need to ask the hard questions. What if they were using a biofuel to produce the soybeans (fuel for tractors, pesticides, herbicides, organic production)?
Feb 21st, 2009
Brett
I might be off base here, but I would like to know how much oil is used to produce the soybeans. Once you add all the gas the tractors use, all the petroleum based herbicides and everything else, if it really is still even a plus at all?
Feb 19th, 2009
Don
To answer your question, Albert, there is indeed merit to water blown soy based polyurethane foam insulation – for the same reason there is merit to all polyurethane foam insulations, which I have mentioned above. Are companies capitalizing on the renewable resource / recycled content of their products? Yes, and so they should. This is by no means “greenwashing” – having any amount of non-petroleum based materials is a plus. But the primary environmental benefit of spray foam is energy conservation – up to 60% depending on the building, its location and use.
Feb 18th, 2009
Albert
There is no disputing the effectiveness of spray foam as an insulation product. In my dealing with builders, we’ve always recommended spray foam to customers. It costs more up front, but it saves in the long run. I’m a fan of spray foam, I use Great Stuff around the door frames and window frames in my 100+ year old apartment.
What I am interested in learning about, or encouraging to change, is how spray foam gets from the source material to the finished material.
Are companies like BioBased greenwashing by repackaging existing organic based spray foam and potentially selling it for more than a competitor, or is there legitimate merit to the stated benefits of “water-blown soy based insulation?”
Feb 10th, 2009
Don
The competitive advantage of spray polyurethane foam insulation, regardless of it’s renewable resource content, is that it prevents air infiltration and leakage. Large scale tests have demonstrated that for a given R-value (the standard measure of insulation), spray foam insulation performs better than fiber insulation – saving up to 60% on energy consumption. The “greenness” of spray foam comes from that “payback” in energy savings. It has been estimated that the initial “investment” in petroleum returns 70-fold over the life of a typical home if sprayfoam is selected.
It should also be noted that soybean oil is extracted from the “skin” of the seed and can be considered a by-product.
Feb 10th, 2009
Albert
Thank you for your input. Blogs are wonderful places to come to discovery and I learn something new everyday writing for SHS.
Could the “Vs.” be in the marketing perhaps? If polyurethanes have always or mostly been based on biologically derived components, what sort of competitive advantage would a small company like BioBased have over an Owens Corning type insulation manufacturer?
Could, in addition to growing organically, commodity farmers who supply the organic agents used in rigid foam insulation grow a soy plant that would only be used for byproducts and not food?
Thoughts? Anyone?
Feb 10th, 2009
Kris Bergstrom
Thank you for this thoughtful post on the new product. Weighing the benefits and drawbacks of a product is a tricky thing, and your post honestly faces the challenge.
I suppose BioBased insulation would gain a large step in “green-ness” if the soybeans used in its production were organic.
Feb 9th, 2009
Don
Interesting thoughts, but soy based foams are bona fide polyurethanes! Part of the chemistry includes soy based raw materials, which is a relatively new technology and is to be applauded for innovation and making available new renewable resourced based materials.
However, it should also be noted that rigid polyurethane foam insulation has for over 50 years been based on renewable resource based materials. Sucrose (sugar – from beets or corn) has been used in polyurethane insulation that can be found not only in rigid spray foam insulation, but also in the insulation in appliances, coolers, and other construction materials. In fact, the percentage of renewable resource raw materials in those applications exceeds that on many soy-based materials now being introduced.
There is no Soy vs. Polyurethane Spray Foam Wars. There are options of different Spray Polyurethane Foam insulations – but they are all “Polyurethane” and they are all based on renewable resources.
Feb 8th, 2009
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