Routes to achieving fire and heat protection

For the purpose of this discussion, high performance requirements will be arbitrarily defined as those in which a textile must resist a heat or fire hazard for a significant period and so protect against thermal threats yielding temperatures above 200°C for periods of greater than 60 s. Therefore, 

1 Heat and fire resistant organic polymeric fibres and blends 

Heat resistant fibres, however, are those having chemical structures that are little changed physically or chemically by temperatures above the 200°C, and even the 300°C, levels and, in the case of ceramic fibres, above 1000°C. For textiles used in high temperature industrial processes, such as gas and liquid filtration, long term exposure to temperatures of about 100°C is often required, but not all these fibres are used in thermally protective applications. However, in long term exposure thermally protective applications, we need to be able to define maximum service fife temperatures, and these are listed in Table 4.2 for selected heat resistant fibres. 

Fibre genus Second order temperature (°C) Melting temperature (°C) Onset of decomposition (°C) Maximum, continuous use temperature (°C) LOI, vol % 

Notes NA = not applicable (decomp) = with decomposition (est) = estimated value (env) = depends on chemical inertness of the environment. 

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