Melamine (melamine production)

Emissions generated by the activity within the product supply chain as described in ecoinvent v3.10. The product melamine is an organic substance with a CAS no. : 108-78-1. It is called '1 3 5-triazine-2 4 6-triamine' under IUPAC naming and its molecular formula is: C3H6N6. Other names are Cyanurotriamide Cyanuramide Isomelamine and Cyanurotriamine. Melamine is at room temperature a fine white powered crystal. Its solubility in water is depending on temperature. Almost 100% of melamine is produced out of urea. Different production techniques can be distinguished. All of them are either high-pressure reactions without any catalysts or catalytic reactions at low pressure. This product represents a 50:50 mix of melamine produced by the BASF process (as representative for the low-pressure reactions) and the Montedison process (example of high pressure process). Most melamine is used for the reaction with formaldehyde for the production of resins used in laminating and adhesive applications. Among these applications one of the most important ones is the use of melamine for the upper sheet e. g. of tabletops. A second important use of melamine is its function as amino cross-linker in heat-cured systems - e. g. in the automotive industry. Furthermore this substance is also applied in other fields like wet-strength resins for paper industry ion-exchange resins plastic moulding compounds or fire retardants in PUR foam. The cut-off classification is allocatable product. The activity type is ordinary transforming activity. The reference product amount is 1.