Mechanism of Fire Retardance in Plastics
Thinking about what are fire Retardant Additives? Here’s the answer!
Fire retardant additives are nothing but chemical compounds added to plastics with an aim to inhibit/ retard the ignition/ burning of them. Flame retardants are essential to plastic materials or devices that we use every day. There are a number of terms used to describe plastics/ polymers incorporating flame retardant agents viz. Ignition resistant, fire retardant, self-extinguishing, etc.
How fire-retardant additives help?
A variety of flame retardant agents can be deployed in different polymers depending on the specific requirements of individual end-use applications. However, all of them are incorporated with the same objective.
Here are the objectives of adding fire retardant additives:
● Increase plastics’ ignition resistance
● Reduce the speed of flame spread
● Reduce heat release
● Reduce smoke & fume generation
● Mitigate fire danger
When plastics are exposed to heat or flame, they undergo pyrolysis, which further results in thermal degradation of the material’s physical properties i.e. softening or melting, and release of volatile gases. To limit the establishment of this combustion cycle, flame retardant moderates one or more of the elements (heat, fuel, and oxygen) necessary for the combustion to take place.
Depending on the characteristics of the material and the fire safety test, Flame Retardant Additives are made to interfere with one or more stages of the combustion process: heating, decomposition, ignition, flame spread, or smoke process.
There are three main mechanisms for flame retardance in plastics: Vapor phase inhibition, quench & cool, and solid-phase char-formation. In vapor phase inhibition, retardants react with the burning polymer in the vapor phase disrupting the production of free radicals and thus shuts down the process. In solid-phase char forming, retardants react to form a carbonaceous layer on the surface of plastics, thus insulating it and slowing down the pyrolysis. In the last quench & cool mechanism, additives use an endothermic reaction and release water molecules that cool down the material and dilute the combustion process.
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