Fire retarded mechanism of inorganic tin compounds in flexible poly (vinyl chloride)

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to study the fire retarded mechanism of inorganic tin compounds i.e. zinc hydroxystannate and zinc stannate in plasticized PVC by neutron activation analysis, which is a method to consider the amount of tin and zinc elements in carbonaceous char after burning flexible PVC samples in the air, and thermal gravimetric analysis, which is a technique that measures the continuous weight lost of samples as a function of temperature. Furthermore, this research investigates the effects of fire retardats in plasticized PVC samples on mechanical properties and horizontal flammability testing. It was found that both condensed and vapor phase mechanisms were responsible for the fire retardation in the plasticized PVC samples with 4 parts of zinc hydroxystannate or zinc stannate per 100 parts of PVC compound. These inorganic tin compounds exhibited little effects on mechanical properties and showed similar results on the horizontal flammability as antimony trioxide.