Superabsorbent revolution in hygiene

For the past 20 years, baby care has been made so much easier. In the old days, changing a baby was an endless work with a constant row of drying nappies on display. Today, a parent's life has been transformed by the introduction of relatively cheap disposable nappies based on a wide family of superabsorbent polymers (SAP), a 100-800 mu m powder with tremendous absorption power. The continual increase of SAP production has been mainly owned to the market growth in hygiene applications such as disposable diapers and sanitary napkins and, more recently, to the increase of the SAP content in baby diapers and the market expansion of adult disposable diapers. Due to the promised consumption in the hygiene applications and their competitiveness, SAP research and development have been greatly accelerated and have mainly focused to fit its performance to these applications.