In order to reduce the risk of flame hazard of polymeric materials and harmful effects from conventional flame retardant to human body, various kinds of flame retardants have been developed. Among them, intumescent flame retardant (IFR) composed of the phosphorus compound is becoming a promising candidate to replace the conventional halogenated flame retardant due to its high performance and eco-friendliness. The IFR consists several constituents, such as acid catalyst, blowing agent and char forming agent. The IFR performance can be decided by the combination of each constituent. Therefore, IFR has an advantage to provide the customised flame retardant property for different fire situations by changing the various constituent combinations. However, it normally requires higher FR loading for composite preparation compared to halogenated flame retardant to achieve the same performance because of its different fire extinguishing mechanism. Therefore, the development of IFR with high performance and low cost is still important.In this context, we suggest a novel flame retardant using low-quality animal fibres, such as coarse wool fibre or chicken feather. The animal fibre plays two roles. First, it is used as a container to include all intumescent constituents and second, it plays as an IFR constituent by itself during burning. The project will be carried out in collaboration with Wool Industries Research Ltd of NZ and another crown research institute.
Undergraduate
In this project, we will investigate the material properties of FR implanted animal fibre (FR fibre) and evaluate the fire retardant property of the modified polymer composite using the FR fibre.
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CACM - Strength of Materials Lab (Newmarket 902 Lvl 3, Lab)