Addition of anti-flaming agents in castor oil based rigid polyurethane foams: studies on mechanical and flammable behaviour
Raminder Kaur, Mukesh Kumar
Abstract
The major drawback in the use of Rigid Polyurethane Foam (RPUF) is its high flammability which limits is industrial applications. In the presented studies, RPUF was incorporated with different antiflamming agents such as Melamine (2,4,6-Triamino-1,3,5-triazine), Tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propylphosphate) (TDCPP) and Tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCP). Unlike the conventional RPUF, the foam developed here is derived from vegetable oil based polyol i.e. from Castor oil. Flammability of resulted RPUFs was tested according to UL 94 V test. The structure of the resulted foam samples was characterized by FTIR, XRD and SEM and their thermal properties were studied by TGA. The mechanical behaviour i.e. Tensile, compressive and flexural strength and hardness was examined by universal testing machine. The investigations made on flammability, mechanical and thermal properties of RPUFs incorporated with melamine, TCP, and TDCPP, suggested that, among all samples prepared, TDCPP incorporated RPUF rendered good thermal stability, mechanical and flame retardant properties. Results obtained from SEM analysis also revealed the reduction in the cell size in case of TDCPP based RPUFs.