Fire hazard with polypropylene

Ignitability may be considered in terms of the ease with which the material or its pyrolysed products may be ignited under given conditions of temperature, pressure and oxygen concentration. In terms of fire hazard, if a material can be ignited more easily than another material. 

Polymers (non flame retarded) Thickness (mm) Heat flux (kWm- ) Time to ignition (s) Heat release rate (kWm ) Peak Overall SEA (m kg ) 

Direct contact with flame or exposure to increasing levels of incident heat radiation can create a serious threat to life and property. Flame propagation also contributes significantly to the spread of fire to unbumt regions and other fuel sources. Thus the rate of flame spread is considered an 

The rate of heat release generated by a combusting material is considered to be a most important single parameter, i.e. it is a measure of the size of a growing fire and is related to the production rate of smoke and toxic effluents. 

The net heat of combustion of PP is approximately 43.4 MJkg [1] which is higher than most other plastics and thus has a potentially higher rate of heat release when involved in fire. Although there is some scatter in the reported heat release rate data for PP, the measured rates of heat release for PP are generally higher than those for most other thermoplastics as shown m Table 1. 

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A polymer material burns easily, and decorative materials that are made of polymer materials, such as PE, PP, and some natural polymer such as cellulose and so forth frequently pose fire hazards. In addition, a great deal of smoke is produced when some materials such as polypropylene and PVC are burned. Because most packing materials are incombustible, adding packing could reduce the concentration of combustible materials and delay matrix combustion. Shang added the fibrous Mg(OH)2 and globular Al(OH)3 to polypropylene to prepare a composite material. Their result shows that the oxygen index of the composite material with fibrous Mg(OH)2... 

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