The Alliance for the Polyurethanes Industry (API), Arlington, Va., has announced the winners of the Polyurethanes 2006 Technical Conference Best Paper Presentation and Best Poster awards. A total of 19 paper awards and four poster awards were presented at the conference on Sept. 25-27, in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Technical paper judging criteria included originality and relevance of the technology, effectiveness of the speaker, as well as clarity of the presentation. Posters were judged on both technical and artistic merits. The following is a partial listing of the Technical Paper Award Winners. For copies of the winning papers or to order a copy of the Polyurethanes 2006 Technical Conference Proceedings, visit the API website at www.polyurethane.org/.

Polyols -- IMPACT -- The Next Generation of Polyol Technology: Unique Kinetics; Jose F. Pazos, Ken McDaniel, Edward Browne and Karl Haider, Bayer MaterialScience LLC.

Processing Innovations -- Case-Specific Developments in PU Spray Equipment; Bruce Spivey and Steffen Bauer, Kraus-Maffei.

Renewable Content Polyols -- Seed Oil-Based Polyester Polyols for Coating Applications; John Argyropolous, Debkumar Bhattacharjee and William Koonce, The Dow Chemical Company.

CASE 1 -- Novel Solvent-Free Polyurethane Dispersions for Wood Coating; Friederike Stollmaier and Michael Elwell (DOW Deutschland Anlagen GmbH), Debkumar Bhattacharjee (The Dow Chemical Company).

Chemistry -- New Diamine Curatives; Paul Wiggins, Judith Orgad and Bill Brown, Albemarle Corp.

Construction 2 -- Antimicrobial Performance Variability in Polyurethane Substrates; T. E. Robitaille and Robert C. Hire, Arch Chemicals, Inc.