Extruded expanded Polystyrene Foam Core Board For Foam Board Insulation

Review On Extruded expanded Polystyrene Foam Core Board For Foam Board Insulation

In the field of insulation, foam board insulation occupies one of the leading places do to its qualities and ease of use. The bulk of polystyrene foam core boards consist of two types of foams: Molded wide Polystyrene foam and Extruded wide Polystyrene foam.

While similar, the two have separate properties and should be used accordingly to insulate separate areas of a building, considering their specifications and the level of insulation needed.

Extruded wide Polystyrene, for short "Xeps" or "Xps", is a closed-cell foam with great surface roughness, improved thermal insulation properties and higher stiffness than usual wide polystyrene foam core board.

At first, solid, unexpanded polystyrene crystals are mixed with any chemical additives. The composition makes the polystyrene crystals liquefy, and a blowing agent is added. The resulting composition is heated until the blowing agent activates and starts releasing gas bubbles. This foam is fed into an extruder, which recombines and melts the composition under controlled pressure and climatic characteristic conditions until it come to be a viscous plastic fluid. After the requisite conditions are met, the hot fluid is forced straight through a die.

After exiting the die, the foam expands and is let to cool before being cut into required foam core board shapes and dimensions remarkable for the foam board insulation.

The benefit of the extrusion process is that the resulting foam has greater density, in the range of 28 to 45 kg/m3. The thermal resistivity for Xeps foam core boards is nearby R-5 (meaning about 35 m-K/Ws) per inch of thickness.

Delivering a much higher R-value per inch of thickness compared with its polystyrene relative, Molded wide Polystyrene, Xeps is highly remarkable for foam board insulation which aims to offer a greater insulation while using a much thinner foam core board, and therefore is recommended for areas where good insulation is needed, like roofs, or areas where the available space is limited.